
Class_IP,.Rl.3.6^ 
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The Best English Essays 



EDITED BT 

SHERWIN CODY 



A Selection from the World's 
Greatest Short Stories. 
i8mo. $i.oo net. 

A Selection from the Best En- 
glish Essays. i8mo. ^i.oonet. 

In Preparation 

The World's Greatest Ora- 
tions. i8mo. $i.oo net. 





A SELECTION 
FROM THE BEST 
ENGLISH ESSAYS 

ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY 
OF ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 


CHOSEN AND ARRANGED WITH 
HISTORICAL & CRITICAL INTRODUCTIONS 

By SHERWIN CODY 

EDITOR or " THE WORLd's GREATEST SHORT STORIES," AND AUTHOR 
OF '<THE ART OF WRITING AND SPEAKING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE" 


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CHICAGO . A. C. McCLURG 
^ COMPANY . MCMIII 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS. 

Two Copies Receiver' 



Cvfy«i'r^^ Entry 

(tLk'^% O^ XXo. Nc 

COPY B. 



Copyright 

By a. C. McClurg & Co 

A.D. 1903 



C4 



Published May 23, 1903 



UNIVERSITY PRfcSS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON * CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



n On 

.I- 



TO 
JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG, Ph.D., 

Professor of Rhetoric at Amherst College 



Contents 



Page 

Preface xi 

General Introduction — The English Essay and 
English Prose Style : 

I. Historical Review xvii 

II. Style, or the Artistic Element in Prose . xxv 

III. The Possibilities of Prose xxxii 

I. Bacon : Master of Condensation .... 3 

Of Studies (version of 1597) . . . . 5 

Of Studies (version of 1625) . . . . 6 

Of Truth 8 

Of Friendship 11 

II. Swift : the Greatest English Satirist ... 23 

A Tale of a Tub 26 

The Bookseller's Dedication to the Right 

Honourable John Lord Somers . . 26 
The Epistle Dedicatory to His Royal 

Highness Prince Posterity .... 31 

Preface 38 

The Three Brothers and their Coats 

[Sect. II] 39 



Vlll 



Contents 



III. 



IV. 



Addison : First of the Humorists , , 
Sir Roger De Coverley in the Country 

Sir Roger at Home . . . 

Sir Roger and Will Wimble . 

Sir Roger at Church . . . 
The Man of the Town . . . 
The Fan Exercise .... 



Lamb : Greatest of the Humorists 
Letter to Coleridge .... 
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 
Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist 
Poor Relations 



«Im- 



Page 

55 
57 
57 
62 

65 
69 

72 

79 
82 
84 

94 
103 



De Quincey : Inventor of Modern 
passioned Prose " .... 
The English Mail Coach . . , 
Sect. I — The Glory of Motion 

Going down with Victory 

Sect. II— The Vision of Sudden Death 

Sect. Ill — Dream- Fugue : Founded 

on the Preceding Theme of Sudden 

Death 154 

Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow 
{Suspiria de Profundis) 165 



"5 
118 
120 
126 
131 



VI. Carlyle : the Latter- Day Prophet 
Characteristics 



177 

180 



VII. Emerson : the Lecturer 237 

Self- Reliance 240 



Contents ix 

Page 

VIII. Macaulay: the Rhetorician 277 

The Puritans (Essay on Milton) . . . 278 
Boswell's " Life of Johnson " . ... 284 
The Perfect Historian (Essay on His- 
tory) 321 

IX. Ruskin: the Impassioned Critic . . . . 329 

Sea-Painting (Modern Painters, Vol. I.) . 333 
The Virtues of Architecture (Stones of 

Venice, Vol. II.) 347 

The Crown of Wild Olive (Introduction 

or Preface) 360 

X. Matthew Arnold : the Intellectual Critic 3 79 

Sweetness and Light (Culture and Anarchy) 382 



PREFACE 

A PREFACE is an invention to enable an 
author to argue with his critics without 
disturbing the general reader, who is 
expected to skip the preface. The remarks in this 
preface are addressed to a very small number of 
persons; but they are the persons whose voices 
are most likely to be heard, while the multitude 
(if by any chance this volume should have a 
multitude) of common readers will remain pro- 
foundly quiet. 

I wish to answer several questions which I as 
a critic have put to myself as an editor of essays : 
Are selections a cheap substitute for complete 
works? or are they better than complete works? 
or should they not be attempted at all? 

My answer as an editor to that threefold ques- 
tion is, that for the common reader, whose time 
is limited, the complete works of an author are 
almost useless because of their bulk and the time 
necessary to get through them. As a result, com- 
plete works are put on library shelves, there to 
remain unread. Any man who can help his fel- 
lows to read more successfully is a public bene- 



xii Preface 

factor. If an editor can separate the work which 
the common reader will care to read from that 
which he will not care to read, so that with the 
limited time at the reader's disposal and limited 
mental energy remaining after the drudgery of 
life has had its share, some parts of a great author 
will actually get read, that editor is performing 
a public service by selection, and a service that no 
man can perform in any other possible way. 

Now how can this selection be made so that it 
will have the desired effect ? 

Many competent judges have asserted that 
" selections are a snare and a delusion." I know 
very well what they mean, and agree with them. 
They refer to the scrappy "specimens" of authors' 
libraries that make no other pretension than to be 
cheap substitutes for vastly larger collections of 
complete works. It kills a literary work to muti- 
late it. But selection of complete portions even 
of longer works need not be mutilation. 

We have no special difficulty in selecting novels, 
since each novel constitutes a volume, and we can 
buy and read the volume we wish. It is not 
necessary to place Dickens's complete works along 
five feet of our library shelves in order to get 
" David Copperfield." A short story or an essay, 
however, cannot conveniently or economically be 
printed in a separate volume. Yet it is just as 
separate and distinct a work of literary art as a 
novel is. Each essay and each short story ought 
to stand on its own feet, and be judged quite by 



Preface xili 

itself, just as each poem or oration ought to be 
judged. No greater service can be performed for^ 
such a short masterpiece than taking it away from 
its fellows and setting it by itself. It is like re-' 
moving a shapely maple from the heart of the 
forest, where it is surrounded on all sides by great 
pines that overshadow it, and planting it beside 
the town pump, where every passerby may look 
up with admiration at its beautiful proportions 
and feel gratitude in his heart for the friendly 
shade. This is very different from chopping that 
tree up into fence-posts and using them to form 
an ugly barrier around, let us say, a moss-covered 
tombstone. 

The only unity that can usually be found con- 
necting several essays is the style of the author; 
but that forms a practical reason for placing 
several distinct and complete works of art, such 
as complete ^ essays are, side by side in one vol- 
ume. In the present undertaking, the ideal would 
be to print the work chosen from each author in 
a separate volume. Each has been treated with 
his own separate introduction, so that this could 
easily be done if it were mechanically desirable. 
For the sake of economy and convenience to the 

1 It is to be noted that the division of their work made by 
authors is not the only sign of completeness. Macaulay's descrip- 
tion of the Puritans in the Essay on Milton is complete in itself, 
and so is the study of sea-painting selected from Ruskin's " Modern 
Painters" for this volume, though the brief description of Turner's 
" Slave Ship " at the end would be but a fragment, since it is not 
intelligible except as an illustration of Ruskin's argument. 



xiv Preface 

reader, all are printed in one volume, but in such 
a way that the reader is invited to read and con- 
sider only one author at a time in precisely the 
same way that he would if he had a set of ten or 
a dozen little volumes on his library shelves, one 
of which he would take down and read to-day 
and another to-morrow. Each group contains 
all that any person should think of trying to 
digest at one time. If more were to be swallowed 
it would result in mental dyspepsia. 

One more question remains for brief consider- 
ation. The critic in me asks the editor, Why 
do you undertake to write on " prose style," after 
De Quincey and Pater and all the ten thousand 
others? and how will it help to promote a public 
habit of reading essays? 

I reply that I have not undertaken a discussion 
of style for the purpose of exploiting any special 
critical or philosophic ideas, but only for a purely 
practical object. I believe that no man thinks well 
unless he can express himself well, and that it is 
the duty of every man and woman of intelligence 
and culture to set systematically about acquiring 
a greater command of expression through his 
native language. Self-expression is a simple 
means of testing one's thoughts, even if the ex- 
pression goes no farther than one's own closet. 
But conversation and written letters afford an 
invaluable means of testing one's ideas by the 
ideas of others, if one has command of the me- 
dium of expression. Command of that medium. 



Preface xv 

and the habit and practice of using it, I hold to be 
indispensable to any adequate culture. 

Now essays have two especial uses : They give 
a certain intellectual pleasure that is denied to the 
novel or drama, with their rapid movement and 
their appeal to the universal emotions of the hu- 
man heart, and that is likewise denied to the poem, 
with its lofty atmosphere and highly artificial 
structure, so far removed from the plain level of 
everyday prose (best typified in the prose essay). 
The other special use of the masterpieces of the 
great essayists is in affording to every one models 
of style, or ways of using words, exactly suited to 
everyday conversation and business and social 
letter-writing. Therefore w^hile we are reading 
essays for the intellectual pleasure that they give, 
we ought at the same time to be studying the 
method of each writer in using words, with a 
practical eye to our own needs in the direction of 
a better command of words. No one who would 
take any intellectual pleasure in reading essays 
ought to ignore the other element of style.'^ 

'' Self-Reliance," by Emerson, is used by special 
arrangement with and permission of Houghton, 
Mifilin & Co., the authorized publishers of Emer- 
son's works. 

1 Another reason for the study of " style" in connection with 
essays will be found in the General Introduction, 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

THE ENGLISH ESSAY AND ENGLISH PROSE 
STYLE 



HISTORICAL REVIEW 

IT is interesting to note the form impressed 
upon nearly every species of writing by the 
original mode of publication — a form re- 
tained in greater or less degree long after the 
merely mechanical method of publication had 
been wholly changed. Thus epic poetry was 
originally the chanted narrative of the wandering 
minstrel, telling of heroic deeds and strange 
adventures more or less historic. The lyric poem 
was originally a song — of love or some other 
intense emotion too shy to show its undraped 
form in any other atmosphere than the rosy twi- 
light of the song. The modern short story was 
first told by travellers in taverns, and to this day 
it is not uncommon to find a little tavern vulgarity 
hanging about it. The first modern novel ( Rich- 
ardson's ''Pamela") was a series of letters. 
Dickens and Thackeray were first published in 
shilling parts, and that method of publication so 
fixed uporr the modern novel its characteristic 



xviii General Introduction 

of length}^ formlessness that even to this day 
the defect is being thrown off with the utmost 
difficulty. 

In early times, in Greece for example, prose had 
two methods of publication, namely, through the 
mouth of the orator in places of political debate, 
and through the mouth of the philosophic lecturer 
in his academic grove, where he talked with his 
pupils in a sort of conversational monologue (ex- 
emplified in the writings of Plato). As this latter 
kind of prose could not be indulged in by many, it 
received little or no attention rhetorically. Aris- 
totle's treatise on rhetoric was devoted wholly to 
the art of public speaking. 

So it came about that everything that was not 
an oration or a lecture was expressed only in 
poetry. That narrowing of the field of prose 
due to the original form of publication has per- 
sisted in the minds of many even to this day, and 
scholars and wTiters on rhetoric have taken little 
notice of the new-fangled forms of prose that 
began to come into use only so short a time ago 
as two hundred years. Our textbooks on rhetoric 
are still based on Aristotle, and Plato is held up 
as the only model of a perfect prose style for all 
occasions except those of public speaking. 
— -The beginning of modern English prose as a 
fine art may be conveniently dated from the King 
James translation of the Bible. It is a curious 
thing that a translation should give us new forms 
of prose style, and that we should so constantly 



General Introduction xix 

refer to the English Bible rather than simply to 
the Bible as originally written. The fact is that 
the most literary portions of the Bible were orig- 
inally written as poetry ; but when the translators 
had to turn this Hebrew poetry into English they 
of course found it impossible to make the transla- 
tion take the form of English verse, and were 
confronted with the task of discovering a worthy 
expression in prose. The success of Hebrew 
poetry in English prose was so apparent, and 
came with such universal force into the education 
of every English-speaking man and woman, that 
English prose was exalted to a position that mere 
prose never could have held in Greece or Rome. 
It would not be difficult to trace all our modern 
" prose poetry " and ^' impassioned prose " to 
such masterpieces as " The Book of Job," " The 
Psalms," '' Ecclesiastes," " Song of Solomon," 
etc. 

Even simple prose found a new form in the 
translation of the New Testament. Christ w^as 
not a lecturer or monologue talker, like Socrates.^ 
He merely " conversed " with his disciples. In 
the New Testament for the first time we find 
ordinary conversation raised to the level of per- 
manent literature. The addition to the possibil- 
ities of prose was one of the utmost importance, 

1 The reader in looking over the dialogues of Plato will soon 
perceive that the lay characters are mere figures of straw set up 
for rhetorical purposes. Moreover, Socrates talked of philosophic 
ideas, while Christ appeared more as the friend offering sympathy, 
consolation, and advice. 



XX General Introduction 

and the New Testament formed the training 
school for all our most delightful conversational 
essayists from Addison to Lamb. 

In addition to the oratorical and disquisitional 
(or lecture) styles handed down to us by the 
ancients, and the prose poetry and conversational 
styles given us by the Old and New Testaments, 
^English literature had already received in embryo 
the story-telling style of the traveller in the inn 
as it had been caught and fixed in literature by 
Boccaccio in the " Decameron." The *' Decam- 
eron " was soon reinforced by the " Arabian 
Nights," which had come into existence about the 
same time as the " Decameron," though unknown 
to the English. 

We may now trace in the English prose essay 
(with side glances at English prose fiction) the 
unfolding and development of these five elemen- 
tary prose types. 

The first great English essayist, Bacon, was 
probably not so much influenced by the Bible as 
were all who followed him. He developed the 
conversational style in the essay in an original 
way from classic models, though the result was 
for secular purposes not unlike that for loftier 
purposes, which came from the sayings of Christ 
recorded in the Gospels. Bacon was an admir- 
able conversationist, and he developed his powers 
in that line, and especially as a wit after the 
Elizabethan manner, by a systematic study of 
"apophthegms" (as he called them). Restocked 



General Introduction xxi 

himself with wit in advance, so to speak, by keep- 
ing voluminous notebooks, in which he jotted 
down every clever sentence that occurred to him, 
so that on some suitable occasion he might intro- 
duce it in conversation. He also picked up and 
recorded the epigrammatic or witty sayings of 
others. Realizing that some of these notes of 
his were excellent of their kind, he published 
them in the first edition of his *' Essays." In 
later editions the simple notes were developed 
into more consecutive and perfectly rounded 
compositions. 

Of course there was nothing particularly new 
in the mere form of these epigrammatic and 
highly condensed sentences, for imder the name 
" proverbs " and " epigrams V they had been 
known since the beginning of literature; but the 
accident which led Bacon to shape a group of such 
condensed sayings into a rounded essay gave a 
new form to written and published prose, the 
modern development of which we see in Carlyle, 
and especially in Emerson. " 

Perhaps the first prose writer to show the full 
effect of the style of the English Old Testament 
was Milton. He caught at the very beginning 
and turned most effectively to his uses that pe- 
culiar prose cadence which takes the place of 
metre in poetry. He also gave his writings the 
imaginative quality of the Old Testament prose 
poetry. As Milton's prose was employed for the 
most part in controversial literature, however, it 



xxii General Introduction 

is as a poet that he will be remembered in literary 
history. 

Almost at the same time another writer gave 
us a practical application of the style of the New 
Testament. This was Bunyan in " The Pilgrim's 
Progress." In his " parables " Christ had made 
a somev/hat new application of the old '' fable." 
Bunyan's book was an enlarged parable. His 
style had all the simplicity of everyday conver- 
sation, and he showed clearly how a plain story 
told in so simple a style might be elevated by the 
moral significance, and by this almost alone, to 
the rank of the classics. 

The most simple written expression of con- 
versation, however, is found in friendly letters. 
When paper became cheap enough so that letters 
could easily be written, this style had a natural 
and spontaneous development. Steele was the 
first to suggest the idea of printed letters filled 
with town gossip. His " Tatler," " Spectator," 
and " Guardian " were little more than daily let- 
ters in which the gossip and conversation of the 
wags and wits at the coffee-houses were com- 
municated to a much larger circle of friends. 
Addison, who had been brought up on the English 
Bible, was quick to see the value of this method 
of literary composition, and in the " Spectator " 
he added to the mere secular town gossip of Steele 
something of the moral style of the New Tes- 
tament. C So it was that conversational letter- 
writing became a literary form of the English 



General Introduction xxiii 

language. Here was the beginning of the essay 
in its most popular form. Johnson and Gk)ld- 
smith followed in the steps of Steele and Addi- 
son; and finally in Charles Lamb the humorous 
letter-like essay reached its zenith of perfection." 

Almost at the same time that Steele and Addi- 
son were giving us the " Spectator," another form 
of essay was added to English literature by Swift. 

Though Swift seems to us one of the most 
unclerical and morally repulsive men among the 
great writers of English literature, still I believe 
that a careful study of his work will show that 
he was the literary type par excellence of the 
preacher of his day. That was the day of 
''hell-fire, thunder-and-lightning" sermons. The 
preachers got their cue from the prophets of the 
Old Testament. As soon as the Bible was trans- 
lated they seized upon the denunciations of the 
old Hebrew preachers as furnishing exactly the 
literary form they were in need of, and bran- 
dished their new-found weapons with almost 
demoniac glee. They were intensely in earnest, 
and were fighting the devil upon his own ground. 
The warfare was prodigious, and it is not strange 
that the amenities of peace were often brushed 
ruthlessly aside. As General Sherman said, 
" War is hell " — war upon the devil as well as 
human combat. In this ferocious moral attack 
upon the sins of the world Dean Swift was easily 
the greatest giant of them all. Morose and ill- 
natured as he w^as, he meant well, even in his 



xxiv General Introduction 

" Modest Proposal " for eating children. His 
satirical arrows never missed, and they were shot 
with almost superhuman strength. If the devil 
was at that time leading his forces in person, how 
he must have wished that the great Dean were 
upon his side! 

We may see the influence of Swift in Carlyle, 
and also in the later work of Ruskin ("Fors 
Clavigera"). But in his field of devilish satire. 
Swift stands supreme in English literature, and 
perhaps in any literature. 

The letter-writing style as used by Richardson 
in " Pamela " and '' Clarissa Harlowe " became 
incorporated in the English novel ; and in Thack- 
eray we see the good-humored and humorous 
preaching of Addison perfectly assimilated and 
adapted to the requirements of the novelist. In- 
deed in recalling Bunyan, Swift (in ''Gulliver"), 
Goldsmith, and Thackeray, we realize what a debt 
the novel owes to the essay. 

One more element remains to be considered, 
and that is the lyrical form and use of prose. De 
Ouincey in his '' Confessions of an English 
Opium-Eater," and even more in " The English 
Mail Coach " and " Suspiria de Profundis " 
(which were in the nature of a sequel to the ''Con- 
fessions"), was the first to show the peculiar 
lyrical powers of prose in modern essay writing,^* 
though in " Ecclesiastes " and other parts of the 
Old Testament we have as thorough-going "prose 
poetry " as ever De Quincey gave us. But De 



General Introduction xxv 

Quincey was far outdone in this field by one who 
followed him, namely, Ruskin, in whose hands 
lyrical prose has reached its extreme development 
In the novel, too, it was immensely exploited by 
Dickens. 

The latest development of the English prose 
essay is a return to the Greek of Plato, and no 
better representative of this rejuvenescence of the 
classic spirit could be found than Matthew Ar- 
nold. But these Hellenic moderns have also been 
largely influenced by the French style of such men 
as Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, and Daudet, to men- 
tion three out of a multitude. 

In the following section we shall endeavor to 
see what prose style may be in view of all that has 
gone before. 

II 

STYLE, OR THE ARTISTIC ELEMENT IN PROSE 

Before proceeding with a general considera- 
tion of prose style, let us pause to note an ob- 
jection that the reader may possibly raise at 
this point. Why, he will ask, should you give 
so much space to " style " in introducing the 
" Best English Essays " ? Is not the matter of 
far more importance in a literary composition 
than the manner f ^ 

1 De Quincey says of England: "In no country upon earth, 
were it possible to carry such an axiom into practical effect, is it 



xxvi General Introduction 

Yes, matter is always supreme over manner as 
far as greatness in literature is concerned; but 
it happens that in the essay especially, " the style 
is the man/' As De Quincey, quoting from 
Wordsworth, expresses it, style is not the dress 
of thought, but the incarnation. Though the soul 
of a beautiful woman is infinitely above her body, 
we creatures of sense would entirely lose the soul 
were we to take away the body. Hence we must 
study the body if we would discover the soul. 

The mission of the prose essay is much like the 
mission of woman's beauty — it is to diffuse an 
atmosphere and give us pleasure in such varied 
and minute ways that we are at a loss to analyze 
or assign a reason. In short, an essay should be 
criticised as a work of art, not as a collection of 
moral or scientific truths ; and in so far as prose 
ceases to be a simple vehicle for facts and state- 
ments of truth, and comes to depend for its suc- 
cess on the feeling of pleasure it produces or the 
sense of beauty it conveys, it is said to possess 
" style." 

We understand perfectly how painting as a fine 
art differs from house painting or sign painting, 
and how sculpture differs from stone-hewing. 
We also understand how poetry is a fine art akin 
both to music and to painting, and even how the 
magic of oratorical eloquence ranks spoken prose 

a more determinate tendency of the national mind to value the 
7natter of a book not only as paramount to the 7nanner^ but even 
as distinct from it and as capable of a distinct insulation." 



General Introduction xxvii 

at times with the other arts. But we find it very 
difficult to distinguish between prose the common 
drudge of everyday life, and that development of 
prose which makes it a fine art. For want of a 
better term, the word " style " has been coming 
into use to designate and characterize that prose 
which is an art. Both the words " prose " and 
*' style " are unfortunate in this connection, for 
the reason that both have other uses and mean- 
ings. We speak of that which is dull as '^ prosy," 
and in the common usage " style " refers espe- 
cially to fashions in dress, and next to that to the 
mere manner of doing a thing, as when we say, 
*' That 's his style." It is a serious misfortune 
that when we speak of " prose " we must think 
inevitably of that which is dull and commonplace, 
and when we speak of style that we must think 
of the " styles " that are put on and put off, or of 
idiosyncrasy of manner, of which no man has 
a right to boast. 

In studying the essay from the point of view 
of style, we mean simply that we are studying 
it as a work of fine art, but with one limitation, 
and that is, that while art usually takes into view 
conception and structure as w^ell as execution or 
texture, style applies only to artistic texture. The 
truth is, the essay does not have artistic structure 
in the sense that the short story or the novel or 
the oration or the poem does, but only literary 
artistic texture, or style. (On this latter point 
we have only to recall the discursive and digres- 



xxviii General Introduction 

sive manner of all the great essayists, from 
Addison to De Ouincey.) 

But even when we do catch the meaning of 
style as referring to artistic texture of language, 
we seem to misconceive it, as when we speak of 
wishing to acquire **a style," or to master "style," 
as if there were but one style. This error is en- 
forced apparently by one master of style, namely, 
Flaubert, of whom one of his critics says : " Pos- 
sessed of an absolute belief that there exists but 
one way to express one thing, one word to call 
it by, one adjective to qualify, one verb to animate 
it, he gave himself to superhuman labor for the 
discovery, in every phrase, of that word, that 
verb, that epithet. In this way, he believed in 
some mysterious harmony of expression, and 
when a true word seemed to him to lack euphony, 
still went on seeking another, with invincible 
patience, certain that he had not yet got hold of 
the unique word." ^ 

Only in a very narrow sense was Flaubert 
right. The truth is, there is an infinite number 
of ways of expressing any and every conception 
-— in short, as many different ways as there are 
persons to express it. Laboring under the false 
impression that there is but one style, or, at any 
rate, but one style for any given person, the stu- 
dent in search of style will select some one master 
whom he looks on as *' a master of style " — to- 
day it is most likely to be Pater or Flaubert or 

1 Quoted by Pater in his essay on '* Style." 



General Introduction xxix 

Matthew Arnold — and will confine himself to 
expressing himself as his master does. 

In this volume the editor offers ten masters of 
style, each an acknowledged artist in his way, 
each, as a rule, utterly different from every other. 
Many of these writers commanded more than one 
style ; but we see each only in that style in which 
he was supreme, the style which was especially 
characteristic of him. To the general reader these 
ten different types will be exceedingly useful as 
standards for comparison, and will make his criti- 
cism and judgment of any style in future more 
definite and assured; for not only ought we to 
enjoy works of art intuitively and instinctively, 
but critically. It is only by the introduction of 
the critical standard that we can hope to minimize 
merely personal preference and make possible the 
quick recognition of any worthy work of literary 
art that may come along in current literature. 

For the student of literary style who wishes 
himself to write, these ten types will represent ten 
different ways in which any particular thought 
may possibly be expressed. Without question, 
Flaubert was right in saying that there is one way 
better than all others for expressing any given 
conception. Each class of ideas has its best lit- 
erary form, and if we read these ten groups of 
essays through, we shall see at once that each 
type is so successful, so truly masterful, because 
it is the one type best suited to the particular 
class of ideas with which the writer deals. If 



XXX General Introduction 

one is going to write only of one particular class 
of ideas, one will need only one type of style; 
but as no other writer will be precisely like 
Addison or Ruskin or Matthew Arnold, and may 
have ideas -that would have delighted Bacon or 
Carlyle or De Quincey, and may even have ideas 
representing all ten of our typical writers which 
he will wish to express in ten consecutive sen- 
tences, or even in ten consecutive phrases, or ten 
consecutive words, so he will need all ten styles 
to express those ten ideas in the only perfect way. 

But suppose one fancies that one's ideas are 
most appropriately expressed in the style of De 
Quincey's impassioned prose or in Macaulay's 
rhetoric, and so confines his study to those two 
masters ; what will be the fatal result ? Why, he 
will elongate his mind in one direction until he 
becomes a monstrosity, and his style will be a 
mere literary curiosity. Nothing is more dan- 
gerous than the imitation of one writer, nothing 
more safe than the imitation of many. 

We have spoken of those who wish to read with 
critical intelligence, and those who wish to write 
with artistic skill, as if they were separate and 
distinct classes. In a small degree they are; but 
for the most part they are one and the same. 
Every intelligent person ought to read literature 
with a well-developed critical taste: nearly every 
one will admit that ; but many will say that only 
the few who are to become professional writers 
will wish to spend any time in acquiring personal 



General Introduction xxxi 

and actual skill. This is an error, however ; every 
person who will have any desire to read with 
critical intelligence will have occasion to employ 
artistic expression in two common ways, namely, 
in conversation and in letter-writing. In our 
historical review we have noticed how several of 
the essay styles originated in conversation and in 
letter-writing. Conversely, the masterly essays 
that resulted from these sources will be the best 
models for successful conversation and successful 
letter-writing, and therefore should be studied 
imitatively as well as critically. Nay, more, the 
critical perception works most quickly and cer- 
tainly when the imitative faculty is called into 
activity. In other words, the quickest and surest 
way to master Lamb's style critically is to try to 
write like Lamb yourself, and to keep at your 
imitative efforts till you acquire some sort of 
skill. 

In conclusion, I may say that there is nothing 
magical about the choice of ten types here pre- 
sented. Possibly ten other types equally good 
might have been found, at least if oratory and 
fiction could have been laid under contribution. 
In oratory and fiction, however, we come upon 
argumentative and dramatic structure, which is 
quite a different thing from style, and might 
conceivably interfere seriously with the study of 
it. The essay, like conversation and letters, has 
no structure. It is, as has previously been said, 
a pure representative of style as artistic literary 



xxxii General Introduction 

texture, and so for the ordinary student the essay 
furnishes the simplest and most natural models 
of style. 

Nor is there anything magical in the historical 
system and analytic arrangement here offered 
merely for their practical utility to the student. 
Every great writer is a type in himself. His style 
is sui generis, and his roots run out in a thousand 
directions. But in studying an author, we shall 
gain most for ourselves by limiting our examina- 
tion to one point of view ; and our study of differ- 
ent types of style must have a sharp limit. The 
chief thing is that the types we select should be 
as different as possible. When we have gotten 
clearly no more than three different views of the 
possibilities of prose style, we are pretty well pre- 
pared to go on and differentiate thereafter for 
ourselves. 



Ill 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF PROSE 

If I should say that I believe that in the next 
century prose will supersede verse in all forms of 
creative writing except songs that may be set to 
music, or purely lyrical poetry, some might con- 
sider me a wild prophet. More unprejudiced 
observers would probably agree with me. Not 
a few critics have intimated that Wordsworth 
would have done better to have chosen the prose 



General Introduction xxxiii 

form for most of his compositions. Though if 
Browning had written prose it would possibly 
have been what might be dubbed " Meredithian," 
probably few will not admit that George Meredith 
was wise in devoting himself as largely as he did 
to the prose form of composition. I have always 
thought that if Byron had written his descriptive 
poems in prose they would be more widely read 
to-day than they are. It is also interesting to note 
that Byron has been especially popular on the 
continent of Europe, where, presumably, his work 
is best known in prose translations similar to our 
prose translations of the poetry of the Bible. We 
have one prose writer, namely, Ruskin, who by 
the admission of all his critics has very distinctly 
the characteristics of a poet. Shelley or Keats 
was not more passionate and unrestrained in en- 
thusiasm than Ruskin. Yet Ruskin wrote prose. 
To be sure, Mr. W. C. Brownell tells us Ruskin 
is a sorry case, that his style lacks form and his 
matter lacks substance; that he was entirely out 
of his sphere in writing art criticisms; and that 
in the days when nothing but literary asbestos 
survives the fires of Time, there will be exceed- 
ingly little of Ruskin remaining. Mr. Brownell 
implies that Ruskin' s mistake was in not writing 
in verse, a literary form that might have saved 
him by imposing on him some restraint. He 
points out lack of restraint as the vital defect 
of all so-called " prose poetry." Prose, he says, 
ought to be sane, and he seems to think that it is 



xxxiv General Introduction 

quite impossible that it should be sane unless it 
restricts itself to scrupulous exactness of phrase. 
The salvation of poetry is in the restriction im- 
posed by its form when the author completely 
abandons himself to his emotion. 

Now the case of Ruskin is interesting for the 
reason that in Ruskin' s early writings we find the 
extreme development of lyrical prose. If we ad- 
mit that Ruskin succeeded in his " prose poetry," 
it will be hard to point out anything which prose 
cannot do. 

Some have hinted that Ruskin learned his 
method of using prose from Hooker. Though 
he may have got from Hooker the hint that 
started him in this direction, Ruskin learned his 
art from the Bible. His writings contain no more 
passionate prose poetry than we may read in 
" Ecclesiastes," for example. Old Testament 
prose poetry has been passed over because it was 
originally poetry pure and simple, and we may 
suppose that the translators would have given it 
the verse form in English had they been able. 
But could they have done any better than they 
did do? Evidently Ruskin thought they couldn't. 
He was brought up on the Bible. His biographer, 
Frederic Harrison, cites one short passage con- 
taining sixty allusions to the Bible. In studying 
Ruskin's prose we are inevitably driven back to 
his model, the Bible. 

Now the interesting thing about the Bible is 
that its prose (if not its original poetry) was the 



General Introduction xxxv 

work of aged scholars, in whom the unrestrained 
and fierce ardors of the young Ruskin, when he 
wrote "Modern Painters" (twenty- four), were 
wholly lacking. They chose the words they did 
in much the same way that Flaubert chose his 
words, because they were eminently suitable, 
better than any other words they could find after 
exhaustive search, and words on which a body of 
men agreed. So far as my reading extends, no 
one has ever criticised the prose poetry of the 
Bible, not even Mr. Brownell. 

We need not press this matter of the lyrical 
any farther. It is but a small matter even in 
poetry. We could sacrifice it entirely and still 
say that if " Paradise Lost," " The Excursion," 
" Childe Harold " or " Don Juan," or " The Ring 
and the Book " were to be written to-day, they 
v/ould probably be written in prose. Such is the 
change in public sentiment that has come about in 
fifty years! The public seems to have lost the 
art of reading verse, and if the great narrative 
poems of the past are to be saved, they must be 
translated into prose. Apparently the public has 
waked up to the fact that prose is just as capable 
of expressing high thoughts, and that it is infi- 
nitely easier to read. While Ruskin's contem- 
porary verse-poets are being read less and less 
every year, till we can fancy that at last only their 
short lyrics will survive, Ruskin, the prose poet, 
not only got himself extensively read in his own 
day, but continues to be read side by side with 



xxxvi General Introduction 

the popular novelists, in spite of the fact that he 
had all the faults of those verse-poet contempo- 
raries. The fact is, the public no longer reads 
verse poetry, and it is not easy to conceive that 
any poet could by any possibility arise who could 
repeat the great popular successes of Scott's, 
Byron's, or Moore's long poems. 

Let us leave argument and turn to the practical 
side of the question. 

We are confronted with the fact that everybody 
writes prose, and it is hard to see any sharp line 
of demarcation between the prose we find in news- 
papers, let us say, and that which we might find 
in a prose poem. Everybody writes prose, and if 
everybody were allowed to wander into the fields 
in which Mr. Ruskin has operated, we should 
probably find ourselves in Bedlam. Even to 
recommend the study and cultivation of this ex- 
treme sort of prose might seem opening the door 
to morbidity, to all that lack of sanity to which 
Mr. Brownell so justly objects. There is no 
question that Ruskin's imitators have made most 
wretched work of it. Nothing could be more 
nauseating than their so-called " prose poetry," 
whereas the minor poet is eminently harmless. 

The fact is, while any one can write prose, the 
complete mastery of it is so difficult that it is 
wholly beyond the powers of any one man, unless 
he were to have the mental capacity of a Shake- 
speare. The range of language as an art is infi- 
nitely beyond that of any other art medium. It is 



General Introduction xxxvii 

the only art that can be said to be strictly universal. 
For example, painting as an art ranges from house 
painting to the painting of an " Angelus." Even 
house painting belongs to the art, for in the choice 
of colors, the laying on of the paint, etc., there is 
ample room for skill and taste. So in the art of 
using words, we range from common conversa- 
tion and letter-writing to the prose poetry of the 
Bible, The difference is, that whereas not one 
man in a thousand is even a house painter, only 
a small per cent of the entire population do not 
have occasion to engage in entertaining conver- 
sation or effective letter-writing. Even though 
the number of those that sing and play the piano 
is large, it is trifling beside the number of word- 
artists. And as the number of word-artists is 
relatively so vast at the bottom, at the top it is 
correspondingly small. No painter, no musician, 
stands pre-eminently alone in his art as Shake- 
speare does in his : and great as Shakespeare 
was, we can see how even he might have done 
better. 

Now what shall be the criterion of success that 
can be stated universally for all the possible prac- 
titioners of the art of language? Why, simply 
this : he who conveys his meaning in zvords is 
successful. If our word-artist has but a single 
idea, and can express it in a single word, he may 
not be great, but he is successful. So far as he 
goes he is perfect. Shakespeare himself could 
do no better. The ideal of literary art, then, is 



xxxviii General Introduction 

simply, wholly, to convey meaning, and the more 
simply it can be done the better. If three thou- 
sand words will convey one's meaning, three 
thousand words completely mastered and effec- 
tively used will be sufficient for entire success. 
In this sense complete success as a literary artist 
is quite within the range of every one, and it 
would be hard to find an excuse for lack of such 
success. 

But now we come to those who have, or think 
they have, something special to say, and to those 
ambitious aspirants who wish to make writing a 
passport to fame or money. Let us dispose of 
the latter first. There is undoubtedly a field for 
the professional writer in journalism and the com- 
pilation of books. But there is a potentially large 
class of persons who think : " Now I have n't any- 
thing in particular to say, and I see no special use 
that my writings will have after I produce them. 
But my friends Mary Jones and John Jenks 
have made fortunes out of books, and I can't see 
that they have any more ideas than I have. Why 
should n't I enter the lists and do as well as any 
of them? " It was this class which De Quincey 
had in mind when he wrote : '' Authors have 
always been a dangerous class for any lan- 
guage. Amongst the myriads who are prompted 
to authorship by the coarse love of reputation, 
or by the nobler craving for sympathy, there will 
always be thousands seeking distinction through 
novelties of diction. Hopeless of any audience 



General Introduction xxxix 

through any weight of matter, they will turn for 
their last resource to such tricks of innovation 
as they can bring to bear upon language. What 
care they for purity or simplicity of diction, if at 
any cost of either they can win special attention 
to themselves?" To argue with writers of this 
class or about them is useless. All we can do is 
to try to raise the popular standard and instruct 
the popular taste so that their false efforts will 
find no encouragement at all, and they will be 
forced by sheer starvation to turn to the more 
useful duties of housekeeping or road-making 
or boot-blacking — all eminently useful employ- 
ments, for which possibly they may be fitted. 

Now let us consider for a moment that other 
class, which is no doubt relatively very large; 
the class of those who have ideas which they 
would express, which it is essential to their health 
and happiness that they should express, whether 
in conversation, letters, or the printed page — in 
short, the ^' mute inglorious Miltons " of Gray's 
Elegy. To these, expression is a sort of necessity, 
and we cannot but believe that all honest, sincere 
expression will also prove useful somewhere, to 
somebody beside the expresser. To these the 
inherited stock of common words and everyday 
methods of using them are insufficient. The ideas 
do not get through the words w^hich would convey 
them. 

This is the point at which prose begins to be 
a fine art. The power of words as mechanical 



xl General Introduction 

symbols for ideas is exhausted. We must con- 
sider new ways of using these words. The most 
obvious first step is comparison, and we have 
figures of speech. We find the field we have en- 
tered a very large one, and proceed from simple 
direct comparison in the simile, through the 
metaphor or implied comparison, to antithetic 
comparison and contrast. We discover that 
words are suggestive, and proceed to make large 
use of what Mr. Barrett Wendell would call 
*' connotation." 

But shortly we stumble upon a new difficulty. 
If we are going to use expression for anything 
more than self-relief, we must have an interested 
audience or a body of readers. The average man 
quickly tires of listening. We must work a charm 
upon him and hold him, or all our expression goes 
for naught, and proves practically to be no ex- 
pression at all. We are face to face with the 
problem of " economy of attention," so well dis- 
cussed by Herbert Spencer in his '' Essay on 
Style." 

We may hold the attention of our hearer or 
reader in two ways, — one negatively, by not giv- 
ing him any more of one thing than his mind will 
absorb without weariness ; the other by the posi- 
tive charm of harmonious vibration, that univer- 
sal principle of life showing itself in the soothing 
effect of the monotonous breaking of waves on 
the seashore and also in the positive charm of 
music. If we are to make progress, we must see 



General Introduction xli 

to it that our language has variety, so as not to 
weary, and music, so as actually to charm. 

Verse gets its musical quality in part by the 
beat of successive feet in the metre, and by the 
measured recurrence of rhymes, caesuras, etc. 
But prose substitutes a much freer wave form, 
namely, cadence. Ruskin was a master of ca- 
dence. Says Mr. Brownell, " The cadence of 
Gibbon, of De Quincey, even of Jeremy Taylor, 
is a simple affair beside Ruskin's, which, in com- 
parison, possesses an infinite variety of notes and 
chords." Cadence is wholly a matter of the ear. 
Without an ear for fine harmony it inevitably 
runs into disagreeable sing-song, or fails alto- 
gether. The prose writer uses it so long as it 
serves its purpose, and the moment he does not 
need it, he drops it. The unfortunate thing about 
verse is that the regular beat stays by a man 
whether he wants it or not, and if it does not come 
naturally on suggestion of his ear, he feels obliged 
to force it even when the result is totally destruc- 
tive of harmony. Ruskin in his use of cadence 
has precisely the same fault, for it becomes a man- 
nerism with him, and finally wearies the reader 
past all endurance. This excess we realize as a 
fault in Ruskin. It is equally an inherent fault 
in all verse forms. 

And now we may consider the element of re- 
straint. Verse affords mechanical restraint in 
that it requires a prodigious effort to express a 
high and noble idea effectively in words which 



xlii General Introduction 

will serve the mechanical requirements of metre, 
rhyme, etc., to say nothing of poetic dignity and 
the iron laws of the custom of the ages. The 
writer has to weigh well every syllable, and the 
continued and repeated polishing that is forced 
upon him goes a long way to take the insanity out 
of his emotional expression. Prose has no such 
mechanical restraints, and hence some critics 
would have us believe that it is not so well suited 
to the sane expression of passionate ideas. In 
other words, their cry is, '^ Tie the maniacs down 
with straps ! " 

The penalty that the prose writer suffers when 
he fails in his self-restraint is merely ineffective- 
ness. He is like a free man working freely in a 
free country, as compared with the poet, who is 
more or less confined and liable to a lashing from 
his master's whip if he goes wrong. Or to drop 
the figure, poetry offers the advantage of a me- 
chanical restraint, while prose must depend upon 
the writer's own restraint of his feelings by his 
free-will. Self-mastery is an indispensable pre- 
requisite to writing passionate prose. The case 
of the poet is precisely the opposite, and being a 
lunatic is no special bar to the writing of poetry. 

It will not be difficult to discover that writing 
the highest forms of prose is exceedingly more 
difficult than writing poetry of a corresponding 
grade. Poor prose is far more quickly detected 
by the average man than poor poetry. Matthew 
Arnold has somewhere suggested that good 



General Introduction xliii 

poetry can be produced only by a more or less 
barbarous age.^ It is the natural exalted lan- 
guage of all rude peoples. As civilization ad- 
vances, its power seems to be refined av^ay. Some 
have suspected that the race deteriorates as it 
becomes more civilized, simply for the reason that 
it can no longer produce the poetry of its infancy. 
A better view is to believe that as a man in 
his civil relations advances from a condition of 
slavery to one of freedom and liberty, where his 
own moral sense becomes his real master, the 
controlling force of his life, so literature advances 
from the period when poetry flourishes above prose 
because the self-restraint and self-mastery of the 
writer cannot be depended upon and mechanical 
restraint is necessarily employed, to the nobler 
freedom of prose developed as a fine art and 
depending for its effect and usefulness upon the 
self-mastery and artistic masfery of the writer; 
in other words, upon his eminent sanity fitting 
him for the just exercise of the unlimited powers 
of prose. 

1 It is also to be observed that poetry is most often written 
successfully by young men (Keats, Shelley, Byron), while prose is 
seldom written successfully till age and experience have ripened 
the mind {^vide Thackeray, Lamb, George Eliot, and many 
others). 



BACON 



A SELECTION 

FROM THE 

BEST ENGLISH ESSAYS 

BACON : 
MASTER OF CONDENSATION 

OF all English prose writers, Bacon is the 
most condensed. His successive sen- 
tences approach the condensation of the 
proverb and the aphorism. In the essay '' Of 
Studies " there are half a dozen sentences any 
one of which a modern writer might take as a 
text and expand into a good-sized volurne. More- 
over, it is very interesting to note how he attains 
this unusual condensation, namely, in the simplest 
■ way that condensation can be attained. He does 
no more than state a simple truth in the most 
direct and simple language imaginable. A child 
may do that; but the difference between a child 
and Bacon is that Bacon's simple truth has such 
profound and far-reaching applications. When a 
man has spent a lifetime in investigation of a 
subject, so that it is as familiar to him as his 
A B C's, nothing could be easier or simpler for 
him than to put his finger on the central point, 
the heart of the whole subject. If he displays 



4 Best English Essays 

any peculiar literary skill, it is chiefly in refrain- 
ing from doing anything beside putting his finger 
on the point of interest in his subject. The pro- 
fundity of Bacon's knowledge, the accuracy and 
comprehensiveness of his thought, are the essen- 
tial things in his essays. Little as he suspected 
it when he wrote them, these essays afford us a 
key to the conclusions regarding life of one of 
the profoundest thinkers, one of the keenest 
observers, and one of the most learned men the 
world has ever produced. 

As Bacon is our first essayist, the history of his 
essays is interesting. As a brilliant conversa- 
tionist he was in the habit of jotting down in his 
notebook any terse or suggestive saying he heard, 
or any particularly good sentence that occurred to 
him in the ordinary rounds of his life and studies. 
In 1597 he published a dozen groups of these 
notes. They formed only a few pages in a book 
that contained other matter. Nearly every sen- 
tence was marked with the sign of the paragraph, 
showing that Bacon presented them merely as a 
collection of epigrammatic sentences. By far the 
best of these ten original essays was the one called 
" Of Studies." The book as a whole, however, 
was popular, and in 161 2 a new edition was pub- 
lished, in which nearly all the original essays 
were enlarged and the disjointed notes were more 
closely welded together. Many essays were 
added. In 1625 the final edition, as we now have 
it, appeared, and the collections of notes had 



Bacon 5 

grown into something more nearly resembling 
the modern essay, while the numerous additions 
were written connectedly and at greater length. 

That the student may observe this process of 
development for himself, we present first the 
original form of the essay " Of Studies '' very 
nearly as it appeared in 1597, and then the same 
essay as we find it in the edition of 1625. This 
is followed by two essays, " Of Truth " and 
" Of Friendship," which were first presented in 
the edition of 1625. The latter is the most elab- 
orate and connected, and it will be very interest- 
ing to compare this essay with Emerson's essay 
on " Friendship." Emerson was the same sort 
of writer that Bacon was, but he wrote in an age 
when people read too hurriedly and too exten- 
sively to permit the classic brevity of Bacon to 
have its just effect. 



OF STUDIES 
(Version of 1597)^ 

STUDIES serve for pastimes, for ornaments and 
for abilities. Their chief use for pastime is in 
privatenes and retiring; for omamente is in dis- 
course, and for abilitie is in judgement. For expert 
men can execute, but learned men are fittest to 
judge or censure. 

1 In this essay the original spelling is retained. 



6 Best English Essays 

IfTo spend too much time in them is slouth, to use 
them too much for ornament is affectation : to make 
judgement wholly by their rules, is the humour of 
a Scholler. IfThey perfect Nature, and are perfected 
by experience. IFCraftie men contemne ^ them, simple 
men admire them, wise men use them : For they 
teach not their owne use, but that ^ is a wisedome 
without them : and above them wonne by obser- 
vation. IFReade not to contradict, nor to believe, but 
to waigh and consider. ITSome bookes are to bee 
tasted, others to bee swallowed, and some few to bee 
chewed and digested: That is, some bookes are to 
be read only in partes ; others to be read, but cur- 
sorily, and some few to be read wholly and with 
diligence and attention. ^Reading maketh a full 
man, conference a readye man, and writing an 
exacte man. And therefore if a man write little, 
he had neede have a great memorie, if he conferre 
little, he had neede have a present wit, and if he 
reade little, hee had neede have much cunning, to 
seeme to know that he doth not. ^Histories make 
men wise. Poets wittie: the Mathematickes subtle, 
naturall Phylosophie deepe: Morall grave, Logicke 
and Rhetoricke able to contend. 



(Version of 1625)^ 

STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for 
ability. Their chief use for delight is in pri- 
vateness and retiring ; for ornament is in discourse ; 

^ Misprinted in first edition " continue." 
2 The meaning calls for "there." 

8 In this and the following essays, the spelling has been 
modernized. 



Bacon 7 

and for ability is in the judgment and disposition 
of business. For expert men can execute, and per- 
haps judge of particulars, one by one; but the 
general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of 
affairs, come best from those that are learned. To 
spend too much time in studies is sloth, to use 
them too much for ornament is affectation, to 
make judgment only by their rules is the humour 
of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected 
by experience. For natural abilities are like natu- 
ral plants, that need pruning by study ; and studies 
themselves do give forth directions too much at 
large, except they be bounded in by experience. 
Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire 
them, and wise men use them; for they teach not 
their own use, but that ^ is a wisdom without them 
and above them, won by observation. 

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to be- 
lieve and take for granted, nor to find talk and 
discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books 
are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some 
few to be chewed and digested : that is, some 
books are to be read only in parts; others to be 
read, but not curiously; and some few to be read 
wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some 
books also may be read by deputy, and extracts 
made of them by others; but that would be only 
in the less important arguments and the meaner 
sort of books; else distilled books are like com- 
mon distilled waters, flashy ^ things. Reading 
maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and 
writing an exact man. And therefore if a man 
write little, he had need have a great memory; if 

1 "There" — see preceding page. ^ insipid. 



8 Best English Essays 

he confer little, he had need have a present wit; 
and if he read little, he had need have much cun- 
ning to seem to know that he doth not. 

Histories make men wise, poets witty, the math- 
ematics subtile, natural philosophy deep, moral 
grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend. " Abe- 
unt studia in mores." ^ Nay, there is no stond ^ 
or impediment in the wit but may be wrought 
out by fit studies, like as diseases of the body may 
have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for 
the stone and . reins, shooting for the lungs and 
breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for 
the head, and the like. So if a man's wit be wan- 
dering, let him study the mathematics ; for in dem- 
onstrations, if his wit be called away never so 
little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt 
to distinguish or find differences, let him study the 
schoolmen, for they are cymini sectores.^ If he be 
not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one 
thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study 
the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind 
may have a special receipt. 



OF TRUTH 

"TTT'HAT is truth?" said jesting Pilate; and 

VV would not stay for an answer. Certain 

there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a 

1 Bacon elsewhere paraphrases this : " Studies have an influence 
and operation upon the manners of those that are conversant in 
them." 

2 Stand. Explained by the next word. 
^ Splitters of cumin-seeds. 



Bacon 9 

bondage to fix a belief ; affecting ^ free-will in 
thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sect 
of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there re- 
main certain discoursing wits which are of the same 
veins, though there be not so much blood in them as 
was in those of the ancients. But it is not only 
the difficulty and labour which men take in finding 
out of truth; nor again, that when it is found it 
imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring 
lies in favour: but a natural though corrupt love 
of the lie itself. One of the later school of the 
Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand 
to think what should be in it that men should love 
lies : where neither they make for pleasure, as with 
poets ; nor for advantage, as with the merchant ; 
but for the He's sake. But I cannot tell : this same 
truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not 
show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs 
of the world half so stately and daintily as candle- 
lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of 
a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not 
rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that 
showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie 
doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, 
that if there were taken out of men's minds vain 
opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imag- 
inations as one would, and the like, but it would 
leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken 
things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and 
unpleasing to themselves? One of the Fathers, in 
great severity, called poesy viniim dcemonum,^ be- 
cause it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but 
with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that 
^ Aiming at. ^ The wine of demons. 



lo Best English Essays 

passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh 
in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt; such as 
we spake of before. But howsoever these things 
are thus in men's depraved judgments and affec- 
tions, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, 
teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the 
love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of 
truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief 
of truth, which is the enjoying of it — is the sov- 
ereign good of human nature. The first creature 
of God, in the works of the days, was the light 
of the sense; the last was the light of reason; 
and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumina- 
tion of his Spirit. First he breathed light upon 
the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed 
light into the face of man; and still he breatheth 
and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. 
The poet that beautified the sect that was other- 
wise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well : 
" It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to 
see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand 
in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and 
the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is 
comparable to the standing upon the vantage 
ground of truth " (a hill not to be commanded, 
and where the air is always clear and serene) 
" and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, 
and tempests, in the vale below : " so always, that 
this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling 
or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth to 
have a man's mind move in charity, rest in provi- 
dence, and turn upon the poles of truth. 

To pass from theological and philosophical truth 
to the truth of civil business, it will be acknowl- 



Bacon ii 

edged, even by those that practise it not, that 
clear and round dealing is the honour of man's 
nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy 
in coin of gold and silver: which may make the 
metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For 
these winding and crooked courses are the goings 
of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, 
and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth 
so cover a man with shame as to be found false 
and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne saith 
prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word 
of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an 
odious charge: saith he, "If it be well weighed, 
to say that a man lieth is as much as to say that 
he is brave towards God and a coward towards 
men." For a lie faces God, and shrinks from 
man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and 
breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly ex- 
pressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call 
the judgments of God upon the generations of 
men : it being foretold that when Christ cometh 
" He shall not find faith upon the earth." 



OF FRIENDSHIP 

IT had been hard for him that spake it to have put 
more truth and untruth together in few words 
than in that speech, " Whosoever is delighted in 
solitude is either a wild beast or a god." For it 
is most true that a natural and secret hatred and 
aversation towards society in any man hath some- 
what of the savage beast; but it is most untrue 
that it should have any character at all of the divine 



12 Best English Essays 

nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in 
solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester 
a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is 
found to have been falsely and feignedly in some 
of the heathen, as Epimenides the Candian, Nyma 
the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and ApoUo- 
nius of Tyana ; and truly and really in divers of the 
ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. 
But little do men perceive what solitude is, and 
how far it extendeth ; for a crowd is not company, 
and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk 
but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. 
The Latin adage meeteth with it a little, " Magna 
civitas, magna solitudo " ; ^ because in a great town 
friends are scattered, so that there is not that fel- 
lowship, for the most part, which is in less neigh- 
bourhoods. But we may go further, and affirm 
most truly that it is a mere ^ and miserable solitude 
to want true friends, without which the world is 
but a wilderness. And even in this sense also of 
solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and 
affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the 
beast, and not from humanity. 

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and 
discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, 
which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. 
We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations 
are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not 
much otherwise in the mind ; you may take sarza ^ 
to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of 
sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain, but 
no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to 

1 A great town is a great solitude. 

2 Utter. ' Sarsaparilla. 



Bacon 13 

whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, 
suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the 
heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or 
confession. 

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate 
great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of 
friendship whereof we speak; so great as they pur- 
chase it many times at the hazard of their own 
safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of 
the distance of their fortune from that of their sub- 
jects and servants, cannot gather this fruit except, 
to make themselves capable thereof, they raise 
some persons to be, as it were, companions and 
almost equals to themselves, which many times 
sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages 
give unto such persons the name of favourites or 
privadoes, as if it were matter of grace or conver- 
sation ; but the Roman name attaineth the true 
use and cause thereof, naming them " participes 
curarum," ^ for it is that which tieth the knot. 
And we see plainly that this hath been done, not 
by weak and passionate princes only, but by the 
wisest and most politic that ever reigned ; who have 
oftentimes joined to themselves some of their ser- 
vants, whom both themselves have called friends, 
and allowed others likewise to call them in the 
same manner, using the word which is received 
between private men. 

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised 
Pompey, after surnamed the Great, to that height 
that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla's over- 
match. For when he had carried the consulship 
for a friend of his against the pursuit of Sylla, and 

1 Partners in cares. 



14 Best English Essays 

that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to 
speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and 
in effect bade him be quiet, '' for that more men 
adored the sun rising than the sun setting." With 
Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that 
interest, as he set him down in his testament for 
heir in remainder after his nephew. And this was 
the man that had power with him to draw him 
forth to his death. For when Caesar would have 
discharged the senate, in regard of some ill pre- 
sages, and especially a dream of Calpurnia, this man 
lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, tell- 
ing him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate 
till his wife had dreamt a better dream. And 
it seemeth his favour was so great as Antonius, 
in a letter which is recited verbatim in one of 
Cicero's Philippics, calleth him " venefica," witch, 
as if he had enchanted Caesar. Augustus raised 
Agrippa, though of mean birth, to that height 
as, when he consulted with Maecenas about the 
marriage of his daughter Julia, Maecenas took 
the liberty to tell him, " That he must either marry 
his daughter to Agrippa or take away his life; 
there was no third way, he had made him so 
great." With Tiberius Caesar, Sejanus had as- 
cended to that height as they two were termed and 
reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter 
to him saith : '' Haec pro amicitia nostra non oc- 
cultavi " ; ^ and the whole senate dedicated an 
altar to friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of 
the great dearness of friendship between them two. 
The like or more was between Septimius Severus 

1 On account of our friendship I have not kept these things 
back. 



Bacon 



15 



and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to 
marry the daughter of Plautianus, and would often 
maintain Plautianus in doing affronts to his son ; 
and did write also in a letter to the senate by these 
words : ** I love the man so well as I wish he may 
over-live me." Now, if these princes had been as 
a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, a man might have 
thought that this had proceeded of an abundant 
goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of 
such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme 
lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth 
most plainly that they found their own felicity, 
though as great as ever happened to mortal men, 
but as a half-piece, except they mought have a 
friend to make it entire. And yet, which is more, 
they were princes which had wives, sons, nephews; 
and yet all these could not supply the comfort of 
friendship. 

It is not to be forgotten what Commineus ob- 
serveth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy ; 
namely, that he would communicate his secrets 
with none, and least of all those secrets which 
troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and 
saith that towards his latter time '' that close- 
ness did impair, and a little perish his under- 
standing." Surely Commineus mought have made 
the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, 
of his second master, Louis XL, whose closeness 
was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythag- 
oras is dark but true : " Cor ne edito," eat not 
the heart. Certainly, if a man would give it a 
hard phrase, those that want friends to open them- 
selves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. 
But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I 



1 6 Best English Essays 

will conclude this first-fruit of friendship), which 
is, that this communicating of a man's self to his 
friend works two contrary effects : for it redoubleth 
joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is 
no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but 
he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth 
his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. 
So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a man's 
mind, of like virtue as the alchemists used to 
attribute to their stone for man's body, that it 
worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good 
and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying 
in aid of alchemists, there is a manifest image of 
this in the ordinary course of nature. For in 
bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any 
natural action, and, on the other side, weakeneth 
and dulleth any violent impression: and even so 
is it of minds. 

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and 
sovereign for the understanding, as the first is for 
the affections. For friendship maketh indeed a 
fair day in the affections from storm and tempests ; 
but it maketh daylight in the understanding out 
of darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither 
is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, 
which a man receiveth from his friend ; but before 
you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath 
his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits 
and understanding do clarify and break up in the 
communicating and discoursing with another: he 
tosseth his thoughts more easily, he marshalleth 
them more orderly, he seeth how they look when 
they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth 
wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's 



Bacon 17 

discourse than by a day's meditation. It was 
well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia, 
" That speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and 
put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in 
figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in 
packs." Neither is this second fruit of friend- 
ship, in opening the understanding, restrained 
only to such friends as are able to give a man 
counsel ; they indeed are best, but even without 
that, a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his 
own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as 
against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, 
a man were better relate himself to a statua or 
picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in 
smother. 

Add now, to make this second fruit of friend- 
ship complete, that other point which lieth more 
open, and falleth within vulgar observation : which 
is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith 
well in one of his enigmas, " Dry light is ever 
the best." And certain it is, that the light that 
a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier 
and purer than that which cometh from his own 
understanding and judgment, which is ever infused 
and drenched in his affections and customs. So 
as there is as much difference between the counsel 
that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, 
as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a 
flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a 
man's self; and there is no such remedy against 
flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. 
Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning man- 
ners, the other concerning business. For the 
first, the best preservative to keep the mind in 



1 8 Best Englisli Essays 

health Is the faithful admonition of a friend. The 
calling of a man's self to a strict account is a 
medicine sometime too piercing and corrosive. 
Reading good books of morality is a little flat and 
dead. Observing our faults in others is sometimes 
unproper for our case. But the best receipt (best, 
I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition 
of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what 
gross errors and extreme absurdities many, espe- 
cially of the greater sort, do commit for want of 
a friend to tell them of them ; to the great damage 
both of their fame and fortune. For, as St. James 
saith, they are as men " that look sometimes into 
a glass, and presently forget their own shape and 
favour." As for business, a man may think if he 
will that two eyes see no more than one; or that 
a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; 
or that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath 
said over the four-and- twenty letters; or that a 
musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as 
upon a rest; and such other fond and high imag- 
inations, to think himself all in all. But when all 
is done, the help of good counsel is that which 
setteth business straight. And if any man think 
that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces ; 
asking counsel in one business of one man, and 
in another business of another man; it is well 
(that is to say, better perhaps than if he asked none 
at all ) ; but he runneth two dangers : one, that 
he shall not be faithfully counselled ; — for it is a 
rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire 
friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall 
be bowed and crooked to some ends which he hath 
that giveth it ; — the other, that he shall have counsel 



Bacon 19 

given, hurtful and unsafe, though with good mean- 
ing, and mixed partly of mischief and partly of 
remedy; even as if you would call a physician 
that is thought good for the cure of the disease 
you complain of, but is unacquainted with your 
body, and therefore may put you in way for a 
present cure, but overthroweth your health in 
some other kind, and so cure the disease and kill 
the patient. But a friend that is wholly acquainted 
with a man's estate will beware by furthering any 
present business how he dasheth upon other in- 
convenience. And, therefore, rest not upon scat- 
tered counsels ; they will rather distract and mislead 
than settle and direct. 

After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace 
in the affections, and support of the judgment) 
foUoweth the last fruit, which is like the pomegran- 
ate, full of many kernels : I mean aid, and bearing 
a part in all actions and occasions. Here, the 
best way to represent to life the manifold use of 
friendship, is to cast and see how many things 
there are which a man cannot do himself; and 
then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of 
the ancients to say, " That a friend is another 
himself " ; for that a friend is far more than him- 
self. Men have their time, and die many times in 
desire of some things which they principally take 
to heart, — the bestowing of a child, the finishing of 
a work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, 
he may rest almost secure that the care of those 
things will continue after him. So that a man hath, 
as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a 
body, and that body is confined to a place; but 
where friendship is, all offices of life are, as it were, 



20 Best English Essays 

granted to him and his deputy, for he may exercise 
them by his friend. How many things are there 
which a man cannot, with any face or comeHness, 
say or do himself! A man can scarce allege his 
own merits with modesty, much less extol them ; 
a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or 
beg; and a number of the like. But all these 
things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are 
blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's per- 
son hath many proper^ relations which he cannot 
put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a 
father ; to his wife but as a husband ; to his enemy 
but upon terms ; whereas a friend may speak as 
the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the 
person. But to enumerate these things were end- 
less. I have given the rule where a man cannot 
fitly play his own part : if he have not a friend, he 
may quit the stage. 

1 Personal, peculiar. 



II 

SWIFT 



SWIFT: 
THE GREATEST ENGLISH SATIRIST 

IN his lecture on Swift, Thackeray gives us 
a masterly picture of the famous Dean of 
St. Patrick's, but tells us he was a very bad 
man. Certainly there is nothing very agreeable 
about Swift, and though we have already de- 
scribed him as in a way the typical preacher of 
his day, he is not such a man as we should like 
to have occupy the pulpit of the church we go 
to. For all that, we are forced to admit that in 
his writings it is the element of truth that has 
preserved them. " Gulliver's Travels " is read 
to-day, and will continue to be read by the 
average man long after every one of Swift's 
contemporaries has been relegated to the literary 
attic. Possibly he will be read as a mere story 
teller, by children who suspect him of ferocity 
as little as they suspect the pussy-cat in the 
corner. Still, it is very remarkable that the 
most pungent satire in the language and one of 
the most simple and fascinating stories can exist 
together in the same literary composition. The 



24 Best English Essays 

only way to account for it is to suppose that Swift 
told the simple truth without in any way disfig- 
uring it by his moroseness of temper. 

In his literary style. Swift belongs to the same 
classic school as Bacon. Like Bacon, he states 
simple truths in the plainest and simplest manner ; 
but while Bacon selected profound truths. Swift, 
actuated by the mad bitterness of his temper, was 
always putting his finger with unerring accuracy 
on the weak points of human nature. He tells 
his simple story in his smooth and simple way, 
with no ornament, no exaggeration. No reader 
can question, much less deny, a single syllable; 
but when he looks up and catches the old fellow's 
malicious eye, his very flesh creeps under the 
stinging satire of the truth that the Dean states 
so suavely and so accurately. The Dean is bitter 
and malicious as no other man ever was; but 
he is strictly truthful; and since he is truthful 
we cannot believe that he has ever done human 
nature any harm. 

To be sure. Swift might have applied the puri- 
fying caustic with heartfelt love instead of ma- 
licious glee. The " Modest Proposal " for eating 
children is so repulsive, so sickeningly ferocious, 
that we prefer to pass it by even though it is one 
of the most remarkable pieces of literature of its 
kind. Compare with it the same kind of satire 
on the same subject, inspired by the same bitter- 
ness of heart, that we find in the following para- 
graph from Ruskin's "Fors Clavigera," a propos 



Swift 25 

of the English gentleman's delight in killing 
things for sport: — 

" Of course, all this is natural to a sporting 
people who have learned to like the smell of gun- 
powder, sulphur, and gas tar better than that of 
violets and thyme. But, putting baby-poisoning, 
pigeon-shooting, and rabbit-shooting to-day in com- 
parison with the pleasures of the German Madonna 
and her simple company, and of Chaucer and his 
carolling company : and seeing that the present ef- 
fect of peace upon earth, and well-pleasing in men, 
is that every nation now spends most of its income 
in machinery for shooting the best and the bravest 
men just when they were likely to have become of 
some use to their fathers and mothers, I put it to 
you, my friends all, — calling you so, I suppose for 
the last time, unless you are disposed for friendship 
with Herod instead of Barabbas, — whether it would 
not be more kind and less expensive to make the 
machinery a little smaller, and adapt it to spare 
opium now, and expenses of maintenance and edu- 
cation afterwards (beside no end of diplomacy), 
by taking our sport in shooting babies instead of 
rabbits?" 

There is no doubt, however, that Swift's pitch- 
fork has pricked more skins than Ruskin's subtle 
needle-point. / 

Swift's best satirical essay is undoubtedly his 
first, " A Tale of a Tub." In its digression and 
variety of topics it is a typical essay, and its 
amusing little tale has a very deep political sig- 
nificance; for Peter [St. Peter] is merely Swift's 



26 Best English Essays 

name for the Roman CathoHc Church, Martin 
[Luther] for the Episcopal or EngHsh Church, 
and Jack [Calvin] for the Presbyterian or Non- 
conformist Church. The satire on booksellers in 
the *' Bookseller's Dedication " and the satire on 
current authors in the dedication to " Prince 
Posterity " have nearly as much point to-day as 
when they were written. Altogether these three 
or four selections, complete in themselves, give 
also a very good impression of " A Tale of a 
Tub " as a whole. 



A TALE OF A TUB 
The Bookseller's Dedication 

TO 
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN LORD SOMERS 

My Lord, 

THO' the author has written a large Dedication, 
yet that being addressed to a prince, whom I 
am never likely to have the honour of being known 
to ; a person besides, as far as I can observe, not at 
all regarded, or thought on by any of our present 
writers; and being wholly free from that slavery 
which booksellers usually lie under, to the caprices 
of authors ; I think it a wise piece of presumption 
to inscribe these papers to your Lordship, and to 
implore your Lordship's protection of them. God 
and your Lordship know their faults and their 



Swift 27 

merits; for, as to my own particular, I am alto- 
gether a stranger to the matter ; and though every- 
body else should be equally ignorant, I do not fear 
the sale of the book, at all the worse, upon that 
score. Your Lordship's name on the front in capital 
letters will at any time get off one edition : neither 
would I desire any other help to grow an alderman, 
than a patent for the sole privilege of dedicating to 
your Lordship. 

I should now, in right of a dedicator, give your 
Lordship a list of your own virtues, and, at the same 
time, be very unwilling to offend your modesty ; but 
chiefly, I should celebrate your liberality towards 
men of great parts and small fortunes, and give you 
broad hints that I mean myself. And I was just 
going on, in the usual method, to peruse a hundred 
or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstract to 
be applied to your Lordship ; but I was diverted by 
a certain accident. For, upon the covers of these 
papers, I casually observed written in large letters 
the two following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO ; 
which, for aught I knew, might contain some im- 
portant meaning. But it unluckily fell out, that 
none of the authors I employ understood Latin; 
(though I have them often in pay to translate out of 
that language;) I was therefore compelled to have 
recourse to the curate of our parish, who englished 
it thus. Let it be given to the worthiest: and his 
comment was, that the author meant his work should 
be dedicated to the sublimest genius of the age for 
wit, learning, judgment, eloquence, and wisdom. 
I called at a poet's chamber (who works for my 
shop) in an alley hard by, showed him the transla- 
tion, and desired his opinion, who it was that the 



28 Best English Essays 

author could mean: he told me, after some con- 
sideration, that vanity was a thing he abhorred ; but, 
by the description, he thought himself to be the per- 
son aimed at ; and, at the same time, he very kindly 
offered his own assistance gratis towards penning 
a dedication to himself. I desired him, however, to 
give a second guess. Why, then, said he, it must 
be I, or my Lord Somers. From thence I went to 
several other wits of my acquaintance, with no small 
hazard and weariness to my person, from a prodi- 
gious number of dark, winding stairs ; but found 
them all in the same story, both of your Lordship 
and themselves. Now, your Lordship is to under- 
stand, that this proceeding was not of my own in- 
vention ; for I have somewhere heard it is a maxim, 
that those to whom everybody allows the second 
place, have an undoubted title to the first. 

This infallibly convinced me, that your Lord- 
ship was the person intended by the author. But, 
being very unacquainted in the style and form of 
dedications, I employed those wits aforesaid to 
furnish me with hints and materials, towards a 
panegyric upon your Lordship's virtues. 

In two days they brought me ten sheets of paper, 
filled up on every side. They swore to me, that they 
had ransacked whatever could be found in the char- 
acters of Socrates, Aristides, Epaminondas, Cato, 
Tully, Atticus, and other hard names, which I can- 
not now recollect. However, I have reason to be- 
Heve, they imposed upon my ignorance; because, 
when I came to read over their collections, there 
was not a syllable there, but what I and everybody 
else knew as well as themselves : Therefore I griev- 
ously suspect a cheat; and that these authors of 



Swift 29 

mine stole and transcribed every word, from the 
universal report of mankind. So that I look upon 
myself as fifty shillings out of pocket, to no manner 
of purpose. 

If, by altering the title, I could make the same 
materials serve for another Dedication, (as my bet- 
ters have done, ) it would help to make up my loss ; 
but I have made several persons dip here and there 
in those papers, and before they read three lines, 
they have all assured me plainly, that they can- 
not possibly be applied to any person besides your 
Lordship. 

I expected, indeed, to have heard of your Lord- 
ship's bravery at the head of an army; of your 
undaunted courage in mounting a breach, or scaling 
a wall; or, to have had your pedigree traced in a 
lineal descent from the house of Austria; or, of 
your wonderful talent at dress and dancing; or, 
your profound knowledge in algebra, metaphysics, 
and the oriental tongues. But to ply the world with 
an old beaten story of your wit, and eloquence, and 
learning, and wisdom, and justice, and politeness, 
and candor, and evenness of temper in all scenes of 
life; of that great discernment in discovering, and 
readiness in favouring deserving men; with forty 
other common topics ; I confer, I have neither con- 
science nor countenance to do it. Because there 
is no virtue, either of a public or private life, which 
some circumstances of your own have not often pro- 
duced upon the stage of the world ; and those few, 
which, for want of occasions to exert them, might 
otherwise have passed unseen, or unobserved, by 
your friends, your enemies have at length brought 
to light. 



30 Best English Essays 

'T is true, I should be very loth, the bright ex- 
ample of your Lordship's virtues should be lost to 
after-ages, both for their sake and your own; but 
chiefly because they will be so very necessary to 
adorn the history of a late reign; ^ and that is an- 
other reason why I would forbear to make a recital 
of them here ; because I have been told by wise men, 
that, as Dedications have run for some years past, 
a good historian will not be apt to have recourse 
thither in search of characters. 

There is one point, wherein I think we dedicators 
would do well to change our measures; I mean, 
instead of running on so far upon the praise of our 
patrons' liberality, to spend a word or two in admir- 
ing their patience, I can put no greater compliment 
on your Lordship's, than by giving you so ample an 
occasion to exercise it at present. — Though per- 
haps I shall not be apt to reckon much merit to your 
Lordship upon that score, who having been for- 
merly used to tedious harangues, and sometimes to 
as little purpose, will be the readier to pardon this ; 
especially, when it is offered by one, who is with all 
respect and veneration, 
My Lord, 

Your Lordship's most obedient, 

And most faithful servant. 

The Bookseller.^ 

1 King William's. 

2 The bookseller in whose person Swift writes this dedication 
was John Nutt. 



Swift 3 1 



The Epistle Dedicatory 

TO 

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE POSTERITY^ 
Sir, 

I HERE present Your Highness with the fruits 
of a very few leisure hours, stolen from the 
short intervals of a world of business and of an em- 
ployment quite alien from such amusements as this ; 
the poor production of that refuse of time, which 
has lain heavy upon my hands, during a long pro- 
rogation of parliament, a great dearth of foreign 
news, and a tedious fit of rainy weather ; for which, 
and other reasons, it cannot choose extremely to 
deserve such a patronage as that of Your Highness, 
whose numberless virtues, in so few years, make the 
world look upon you as the future example to all 
princes ; for although Your Highness is hardly got 
clear of infancy, yet has the universal learned world 
already resolved upon appealing to your future dic- 
tates, with the lowest and most resigned submission ; 
fate having decreed you sole arbiter of the produc- 
tions of human wit, in this polite and most accom- 
plished age. Methinks, the number of appellants 
were enough to shock and startle any judge, of a 
genius less unlimited than yours: but, in order to 
prevent such glorious trials, the person (it seems) 
to whose care the education of Your Highness is 

^ It is the usual style of decried writers to appeal to Posterity, 
who is here represented as a prince in his nonage, and Time as 
his governor; and the author begins in a way very frequent with 
him, by personating other writers, who sometimes offer such 
reasons and excuses for publishing their works, as they ought 
chiefly to conceal and be ashamed of. 



32 Best English Essays 

committed/ has resolved (as I am told) to keep you 
in almost a universal ignorance of our studies, 
which it is your inherent birth-right to inspect. 

It is amazing to me, that this person should have 
assurance, in the face of the sun, to go about per- 
suading Your Highness, that our age is almost 
wholly illiterate, and has hardly produced one writer 
upon any subject. I know very well, that when 
Your Highness shall come to riper years, and have 
gone through the learning of antiquity, you will be 
too curious, to neglect inquiring into the authors of 
the very age before you : and to think that this inso- 
lent, in the account he is preparing for your view, 
designs to reduce them to a number so insignificant 
as I am ashamed to mention ; it moves my zeal and 
my spleen for the honour and interest of our vast 
flourishing body, as well as of myself, for whom, I 
know by long experience, he has professed, and still 
continues, a peculiar malice. 

'T is not unlikely, that, when Your Highness will 
one day peruse what I am now writing, you may be 
ready to expostulate with your governor, upon the 
credit of what I here affirm, and command him to 
show you some of our productions. To which he 
will answer, (for I am well informed of his designs,) 
by asking Your Highness, where they are? and 
what is become of them? and pretend it a demon- 
stration that there never were any, because they are 
not then to be found. Not to be found ! Who has 
mislaid them ? Are they sunk in the abyss of things ? 
'T is certain, that in their own nature, they were 
light enough to swim upon the surface for all eter- 
nity. Therefore the fault is in him, who tied weights 

1 Time, allegorically described as the tutor of Posterity. 



Swift ^2 

so heavy to their heels, as to depress them to the 
centre. Is their very essence destroyed? Who has 
annihilated them? But, that it may no longer be a 
doubt with Your Highness, who is to be the author 
of this universal ruin, I beseech you to observe that 
large and terrible scythe which your governor af- 
fects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to 
remark the length and strength, the sharpness and 
hardness, of his nails and teeth : consider his bane- 
ful, abominable breath, enemy to life and matter, 
infectious and corrupting : and then reflect, whether 
it be possible, for any mortal ink and paper of this 
generation, to make a suitable resistance. O ! that 
Your Highness would one day resolve to disarm 
this usurping maitre du palais ^ of his furious en- 
gines, and bring your empire hors de page.^ 

It were endless to recount the several methods of 
tyranny and destruction, which your governor is 
pleased to practise upon this occasion. His inveter- 
ate malice is such to the writings of our age, that of 
several thousands produced yearly from this re- 
nowned city, before the next revolution of the sun, 
there is not one to be heard of: Unhappy infants! 
many of them barbarously destroyed, before they 
have so much as learnt their mother tongue to beg 
for pity. Some he stifles in their cradles ; others 
he frights into convulsions, whereof they suddenly 
die ; some he flays alive ; others he tears limb from 
limb. Great numbers are offered to Moloch; and 

1 Comptroller. The kingdom of France had a race of kings, 
which they call les roisfaineaiis (from their doing nothing), who lived 
lazily in their apartments, while the kingdom was administered by 
the " mayor of the palace," till Charles Martel, the last mayor, put 
his master to death, and took the kingdom into his own hand. 

2 Out of guardianship. 

3 



34 Best English Essays 

the rest, tainted by his breath, die of a languishing 
consumption. 

But the concern I have most at heart, is for our 
corporation of poets ; from whom I am preparing 
a petition to Your Highness, to be subscribed with 
the names of one hundred and thirty-six of the first 
rate; but whose immortal productions are never 
likely to reach your eyes, though each of them is 
now an humble and earnest appellant for the laurel, 
and has large comely volumes ready to show, for a 
support to his pretensions. The never-dying works 
of these illustrious persons, your governor, sir, has 
devoted to unavoidable death; and Your Highness 
is to be made believe, that our age has never arrived 
at the honour to produce one single poet. 

We confess Immortality to be a great and power- 
ful goddess; but in vain we offer up to her our 
devotions and our sacrifices, if Your Highness's 
governor, who has usurped the priesthood, must, by 
an unparalleled ambition and avarice, wholly inter- 
cept and devour them. 

To afiirm that our age is altogether unlearned, 
and devoid of writers in any kind, seems to be an 
assertion so bold and so false, that I have been some 
time thinking, the contrary may almost be proved 
by uncontrollable demonstration. 'T is true, indeed, 
that although their numbers be vast, and their pro- 
ductions numerous in proportion, yet are they hur- 
ried so hastily off the scene, that they escape our 
memory, and elude our sight. When I first thought 
of this address, I had prepared a copious Hst of 
titles to present Your Highness, as an undisputed 
argument for what I affirm. The originals were 
posted fresh upon all gates and corners of streets; 



Swift ^^ 

but, returning in a very few hours to take a review, 
they were all torn down, and fresh ones in their 
places. I inquired after them among readers and 
booksellers ; but I inquired in vain ; the memorial 
of them was lost among men; their place was no 
more to be found; and I was laughed to scorn for 
a clown and a pedant, without all taste and refine- 
ment, little versed in the course of present affairs, 
and that knew nothing of what had passed in the 
best companies of court and town. So that I can 
only avow in general to Your Highness, that we do 
abound in learning and wit; but to fix upon par- 
ticulars, is a task too slippery for my slender abil- 
ities. If I should venture in a windy day to affirm 
to Your Highness, that there is a large cloud near 
the horizon, in the form of a bear; another in the 
zenith, with the head of an ass ; a third to the west- 
ward, with claws like a dragon ; and Your High- 
ness should in a few minutes think fit to examine 
the truth, it is certain they would all be changed in 
figure and position : new ones would arise, and all 
we could agree upon would be, that clouds there 
were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the zoog- 
raphy and topography of them. 

But your governor perhaps may still insist, and 
put the question, — What is then become of those 
immense bales of paper, which must needs have 
been employed in such numbers of books? Can 
these also be wholly annihilate, and so of a sud- 
den, as I pretend? What shall I say in return of 
so invidious an objection? Books, like men their 
authors, have no more than one way of coming into 
the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of 
it, and return no more. 



^6 Best English Essays 

I profess to Your Highness, in the integrity of 
my heart, that what I am going to say is Uterally 
true this minute I am writing: what revolutions 
may happen before it shall be ready for your pe- 
rusal, I can by no means warrant: however, I beg 
you to accept it as a specimen of our learning, our 
politeness, and our wit. I do therefore affirm, upon 
the word of a sincere man, that there is now actually 
in being a certain poet, called John Dryden, whose 
translation of Virgil was lately printed in a large 
folio, well bound, and, if diligent search were made, 
for aught I know, is yet to be seen. There is an- 
other, called Nahum Tate, who is ready to make 
oath, that he has caused many reams of verse to be 
published, whereof both himself and his bookseller, 
(if lawfully required,) can still produce authentic 
copies, and therefore wonders why the world is 
pleased to make such a secret of it. There is a third, 
known by the name of Tom Durfey, a poet of a vast 
comprehension, an universal genius, and most pro- 
found learning.. There are also one Mr. Rymer, 
and one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There 
is a person styled Dr. B — tl-y, who has written near 
a thousand pages of immense erudition, giving a 
full and true account of a certain squabble, of won- 
derful importance, between himself and a book- 
seller: He is a writer of infinite wit and humour; 
no man rallies with a better grace, and in more 
sprightly turns. Farther, I avow to Your Highness, 
that with these eyes I have beheld the person of 
William W-tt-n, B.D., who has written a good 
sizeable volume against a friend of your governor,^ 

1 Sir William Temple, whose praise of Phalaris's Epistles 
brought on him Bentley's criticisms, which appeared in the 



Swift 37 

( from whom, alas ! he must therefore look for little 
favour,) in a most gentlemanly style, adorned with 
the utmost politeness and civility ; replete with dis- 
coveries equally valuable for their novelty and use; 
and embellished with traits of wit, so poignant and 
so apposite, that he is a worthy yokemate to his 
fore-mentioned friend. 

Why should I go upon farther particulars, which 
might fill a volume with the just eulogies of my 
contemporary brethren ? I shall bequeath this piece 
of justice to a larger work, wherein I intend to 
write a character of the present set of wits in our 
nation: their persons I shall describe particularly 
and at length, their genius and understandings in 
miniature. 

In the meantime, I do here make bold to present 
Your Highness with a faithful abstract, drawn from 
the universal body of all arts and sciences, intended 
wholly for your service and construction. Nor do I 
doubt in the least, but Your Highness will peruse it 
as carefully, and make as considerable improve- 
ments, as other young princes have already done, 
by the many volumes of late years written for a help 
to their studies.^ 

That Your Highness may advance in wisdom and 
virtue, as well as years, and at last outshine all your 
royal ancestors, shall be the daily prayer of, 
Sir, 

Your Highnesses, 

Most devoted, 6^c. 

Decemb. 1697. 

second edition of Wotton's " Reflections on Ancient and Modern 
Learning," 

1 There were innumerable books printed for the use of the 
Dauphin of France. 



38 Best English Essays 



Preface 

THE wits of the present age being so very 
numerous and penetrating, it seems the 
grandees of the Church and State begin to fall 
under horrible apprehensions lest these gentlemen, 
during intervals of a long peace, should find leisure 
to pick holes in the weak sides of Religion and Gov- 
ernment. To prevent which, there has been much 
thought employed of late upon certain projects for 
taking off the force and edge of those formidable 
inquirers from canvassing and reasoning upon such 
delicate points. They have at length fixed upon one, 
which will require some time as well as cost to per- 
fect. Meanwhile, the danger hourly increasing, by 
new levies of wits, all appointed (as there is reason 
to fear) with pen, ink, and paper, which may, at an 
hour's warning, be drawn out into pamphlets and 
other offensive weapons ready for immediate exe- 
cution ; it was judged of absolute necessity that 
some present expedient be thought on, till the main 
design can be brought to maturity. To this end at 
a grand committee some days ago, this important 
discovery was made by a certain curious and refined 
observer: that seamen have a custom, when they 
meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub, by way 
of amusement, to divert him from laying violent 
hands upon the ship. This parable was immediately 
mythologized ; the whale was interpreted to be 
Hobbes's " Leviathan," which tosses and plays with 
all schemes of religion and government, whereof a 
great many are hollow and dry, and empty, and 



Swift 39 

noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation. This is 
the Leviathan from whence the terrible wits of our 
age are said to borrow their weapons. The ship in 
danger is easily understood to be its old antitype the 
commonwealth. But how to analyze the tub was a 
matter of difficulty; when, after long inquiry and 
debate, the literal meaning was preserved, and it 
was decreed that, in order to prevent these Levia- 
thans from tossing and sporting with the common- 
wealth (which of itself is too apt to fluctuate), they 
should be diverted from that game by a Tale of a 
Tub. And my genius being conceived to lie not 
unhappily that way, I had the honour done me to be 
engaged in the performance. 



The Three Brothers and their Coats 
[Sect. II.] 

ONCE upon a time, there was a man who had 
three sons by one wife, and all at a birth, 
neither could the midwife tell certainly, which 
was the eldest. Their father died while they were 
young; and upon his deathbed, calling the lads to 
him, spoke thus : 

'' Sons ; because I have purchased no estate, nor 
was born to any, I have long considered of some 
good legacies to bequeath you; and at last, with 
much care, as well as expense, have provided each of 
you (here they are) a new coat. Now, you are to 
understand, that these coats have two virtues con- 
tained in them ; one is, that with good wearing, they 
will last you fresh and sound as long as you live : the 



40 Best English Essays 

other is, that they will grow in the same proportion 
with your bodies, lengthening and widening of them- 
selves, so as to be always fit. Here; let me see 
them on you before I die. So; very well; pray, 
children, wear them clean, and brush them often. 
You will find in my wilF (here it is) full instructions 
in -every particular concerning the wearing and 
management of your coats ; wherein you must be 
very exact, to avoid the penalties I have appointed 
for every transgression or neglect, upon which your 
future fortunes will entirely depend. I have also 
commanded in my will, that you should live to- 
gether in one house like brethren and friends, for 
then you will be sure to thrive, and not otherwise." 

Here the story says, this good father died, and the 
three sons went all together to seek their fortunes. 

I shall not trouble you with recounting what ad- 
ventures they met for the first seven years ; ^ any 
farther than by taking notice, that they carefully 
observed their father's will, and kept their coats in 
very good order: that they travelled through sev- 
eral countries, encountered a reasonable quantity of 
giants, and slew certain dragons. 

Being now arrived at the proper age for produc- 
ing themselves, they came up to town, and fell in 
love with the ladies, but especially three, who about 
that time were in chief reputation; the Duchess 
d'Argent, Madame de Grands Titres, and the 
Countess d'Orgueil.^ On their first appearance, 
our three adventurers met with a very bad recep- 
tion ; and soon with great sagacity guessing out the 
reason, they quickly began to improve in the good 

1 The New Testament. 2 The first seven centuries. 

8 Covetousness, ambition, and pride. 



Swift 41 

qualities of the town : they writ, and raUied, and 
rhymed, and sung, and said, and said nothing : they 
drank, and fought, and slept, and swore, and took 
snuff: they went to new plays on the first night, 
haunted the chocolate houses, beat the watch : they 
bilked hackney-coachmen, ran in debt with shop- 
keepers: they killed bailiffs, kicked fiddlers down 
stairs, eat at Locket's,^ loitered at Will's:^ they 
talked of the drawing-room, and never came there : 
dined with lords they never saw: whispered a 
duchess, and spoke never a word : exposed the 
scrawls of their laundress for billetdoux of quality : 
came ever just from court, and were never seen in 
it: attended the Levee sub dio: got a list of peers 
by heart in one company, and with great familiarity 
retailed them in another. Above all, they con- 
stantly attended those Committees of Senators, who 
are silent in the House, and loud in the coffee-house ; 
where they nightly adjourn to chew the cud of poli- 
tics, and are encompassed with a ring of disciples, 
who lie in wait to catch up their droppings. The 
three brothers had acquired forty other qualifica- 
tions of the like stamp, too tedious to recount, and 
by consequence, were justly reckoned the most ac- 
complished persons in the town : but all would not 
suffice, and the ladies aforesaid continued still in- 
flexible. To clear up which difficulty I must, with 
the reader's good leave and patience, have recourse 
to some points of weight, which the authors of that 
age have not sufficiently illustrated. 

For, about this time it happened a sect arose, 

1 A noted tavern. 

2 Will's coffee-house, the great emporium of libels and scan- 
dals : it acquired the sobriquet of " The Wits' Coffee-House." 



42 Best English Essays 

whose tenets obtained and spread very far, especially 
in the grand monde, and among everybody of good 
fashion. They worshipped a sort of idol/ who, as 
their doctrine delivered, did daily create men by a 
kind of manufactory operation. This idol they 
placed in the highest parts of the house, on an altar 
erected about three foot : he was shown in the pos- 
ture of a Persian emperor, sitting on a superficies, 
with his legs interwoven under him. This god had 
a goose for his ensign: whence it is that some 
learned men pretend to deduce his original from 
Jupiter Capitolinus. At his left hand, beneath the 
altar. Hell seemed to open, and catch at the animals 
the idol was creating; to prevent which, certain of 
his priests hourly flung in pieces of the uninformed 
mass, or substance, and sometimes whole limbs al- 
ready enlivened, which that horrid gulf insatiably 
swallowed, terrible to behold. The goose was also 
held a subaltern divinity or deus minorum gentium, 
before whose shrine was sacrificed that creature, 
whose hourly food is human gore, and who is in so 
great renown abroad, for being the delight and 
favourite of the Egyptian Cercopithecus.^ Millions 
of these animals were cruelly slaughtered every 
day, to appease the hunger of that consuming deity. 
The chief idol was also worshipped as the inventor 
of the yard and needle; whether as the god of 
seamen, or on account of certain other mystical 
attributes, has not been sufficiently cleared. 

The worshippers of this deity had also a system 
of their belief, which seemed to turn upon the fol- 

1 By this idol is meant a tailor. 

^ The ^Egyptians worshipped a monkey, which animal is 
very fond of eating lice, styled here creatures that feed on human 
gore. 



Swift 43 

lowing fundamentals. They held the universe to be 
a large suit of clothes, which invests everything: 
that the earth is invested by the air; the air is in- 
vested by the stars ; and the stars are invested by 
the primum mobile. Look on this globe of earth, 
you will find it to be a very complete and fashion- 
able dress. What is that which some call land, but 
a fine coat faced with green? or the sea, but a 
waistcoat of water-tabby? Proceed to the particu- 
lar works of the creation, you will find how curi- 
ous journeyman Nature has been, to trim up the 
vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a periwig 
adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet 
of white satin is worn by the birch. To conclude 
from all, what is man himself but a micro-coat,^ or 
rather a complete suit of clothes with all its trim- 
mings? As to his body, there can be no dispute: 
but examine even the acquirements of his mind, you 
will find them all contribute in their order towards 
furnishing out an exact dress : to instance no more ; 
is not religion a cloak ; honesty a pair of shoes 
worn out in the dirt ; self-love a surtout ; vanity a 
shirt; and conscience a pair of breeches? 

These postulata being admitted, it will follow in 
due course of reasoning, that those beings, which 
the world calls improperly suits of clothes, are in 
reality the most refined species of animals ; or, to 
proceed higher, that they are rational creatures, or 
men. For, is it not manifest, that they live, and 
move, and talk, and perform all other offices of 
human life? Are not beauty, and wit, and mien, 
and breeding, their inseparable proprieties? In 

1 Alluding to the word microcosm, or a little world, as man 
has been called by philosophers. 



44 Best English Essays 

short, we see nothing but them, hear nothing but 
them. Is it not they who walk the streets, fill up 
parliament-, coffee-, play-houses ? 'T is true, in- 
deed, that these animals, which are vulgarly called 
suits of clothes, or dresses, do, according to certain 
compositions, receive different appellations. If one 
of them be trimmed up with a gold chain, and a red 
gown, and a white rod, and a great horse, it is called 
a Lord-Mayor : if certain ermines and furs be 
placed in a certain position, we style them a Judge ; 
and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin 
we entitle a Bishop. 

Others of these professors, though agreeing in 
the main system, were yet more refined upon certain 
branches of it ; and held, that man was an animal 
compounded of two dresses, the natural and celestial 
suit, which were the body and the soul: that the 
soul was the outward, and the body the inward 
clothing; that the latter was ex traduce; but the 
former of daily creation and circumfusion ; this last 
they proved by scripture, because in them we live, 
and move, and have our being; as Hkewise by phi- 
losophy, because they are all in all, and all in every 
part. Besides, said they, separate these two, and 
you will find the body to be only a senseless un- 
savoury carcase. By all which it is manifest, that 
the outward dress must needs be the soul. 

To this system of religion, were tagged several 
subaltern doctrines, which were entertained with 
great vogue; as particularly, the faculties of the 
mind were deduced by the learned among them in 
this manner; embroidery, was sheer wit; gold 
fringe, was agreeable conversation; gold lace, was 
repartee; a huge long periwig, was humour; and 



Swift 



45 



a coat full of powder, was very good raillery: all 
which required abundance of finesse and delicatesse 
to manage with advantage, as well as a strict observ- 
ance after times and fashions. 

I have, with much pains and reading, collected 
out of ancient authors, this short summary of a body 
of philosophy and divinity, which seems to have 
been composed by a vein and race of thinking, very 
different from any other systems either ancient or 
modern. And it was not merely to entertain or sat- 
isfy the reader's curiosity, but rather to give him 
light into several circumstances of the following 
story; that knowing the state of dispositions and 
opinions in an age so remote, he may better compre- 
hend those great events, which were the issue of 
them. I advise therefore the courteous reader to 
peruse with a world of application, again and again, 
whatever I have written upon this matter. And 
leaving these broken ends, I carefully gather up the 
chief thread of my story and proceed. 

These opinions, therefore, were so universal, as 
well as the practices of them, among the refined 
part of court and town, that our three brother- 
adventurers, as their circumstances then stood, were 
strangely at a loss. For, on the one side, the three 
ladies they addressed themselves to, (whom we have 
named already,) were at the very top of the fashion, 
and abhorred all that were below it but the breadth 
of a hair. On the other side, their father's will was 
very precise, and it was the main precept in it, with 
the greatest penalties annexed, not to add to, or 
diminish from their coats one thread, without a 
positive command in the will. Now, the coats their 
father had left them were, 't is true, of very good 



46 Best English Essays 

cloth, and, besides, so neatly sewn, you would swear 
they were all of a piece ; but, at the same time, very 
plain, and with little or no ornament: and it hap- 
pened, that before they were a month in town, great 
shoulder-knots came up : straight all the world was 
shoulder-knots ; no approaching the ladies' ruelles 
without the quota of shoulder-knots. That fellow, 
cries one, has no soul ; where is his shoulder-knot ? 
Our three brethren soon discovered their want by 
sad experience, meeting in their walks with forty 
mortifications and indignities. If they went to the 
play-house, the door-keeper showed them into the 
twelve-penny gallery. If they called a boat, says a 
waterman, I am first sculler. If they stepped to 
the Rose to take a bottle, the drawer would cry, 
Friend, we sell no ale. If they went to visit a lady, 
a footman met them at the door, with. Pray send 
up your message. In this unhappy case, they went 
immediately to consult their father's will, read it 
over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-knot. 
What should they do? What temper should they 
find? Obedience was absolutely necessary, and yet 
shoulder-knots appeared extremely requisite. After 
much thought, one of the brothers, who happened 
to be more book-learned than the other two, said, 
he had found an expedient. 'T is true, said he, there 
is nothing here in this will, totidem verbis,^ making 
mention of shoulder-knots: but I dare conjecture, 
we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis.^ 
This distinction was immediately approved by all; 
and so they fell again to examine the will. But 
their evil star had so directed the matter, that the 
first syllable was not to be found in the whole writ- 

1 In so many words. ^ in so many syllables. 



Swift 47 

ing. Upon which disappointment, he, who found 
the former evasion, took heart, and said, " Brothers, 
there are yet hopes ; for though we cannot find them 
totidem verbis, nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage 
we shall make them out, tertio modo,^ or totidem 
Uteris." ^ This discovery was also highly com- 
mended, upon which they fell once more to the 
scrutiny, and picked out S,H,0,U,L,D,E,R; when 
the same planet, enemy to their repose, had won- 
derfully contrived, that a K was not to be found. 
Here was a weighty difficulty ! But the distinguish- 
ing brother, (for whom we shall hereafter find a 
name,) now his hand was in, proved by a very good 
argument, that K was a modern, illegitimate letter, 
unknown to the learned ages, nor anywhere to be 
found in ancient manuscripts. " 'T is true," said 
he, " Calendse hath in Q.V.C.^ been sometimes writ 
with a K, but erroneously ; for, in the best copies, 
it ever spelt with a C. And, by consequence, it 
was a gross mistake in our language to spell ' knot ' 
with a K ; " but that from henceforward, he would 
take care it should be writ with a C. Upon this all 
farther difficulty vanished ; shoulder-knots were 
made clearly out to be jure paterno: ^ and our three 
gentlemen swaggered vsdth as large and as flaunting 
ones as the best. 

But, as human happiness is of a very short dura- 
tion, so in those days were human fashions, upon 
which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots had their 
time, and we must now imagine them in their de- 

1 By the third method. 

2 In so many letters. 

^ Quibusdam veteribus codicibus ; /. e. some ancient manu- 
scripts. 

* According to the Father's will. 



48 Best English Essays 

dine; for a certain lord came just from Paris, 
with fifty yards of gold lace upon his coat, exactly 
trimmed after the court fashion of that month. In 
two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars 
of gold lace: whoever durst peep abroad without 
his complement of gold lace, was ill received among 
the women. What should our three knights do 
in this momentous affair? They had sufficiently 
strained a point already in the affair of shoulder- 
knots. Upon recourse to the will, nothing appeared 
there but altum silenthmi} That of the shoulder- 
knots was a loose, flying, circumstantial point; but 
this of gold lace seemed too considerable an alter- 
ation without better warrant. It did aliquo modo 
essentice adhcerere,^ and therefore required a posi- 
tive precept. But about this time it fell out, that 
the learned brother aforesaid had read *' Aristotelis 
Dialectica," and especially that wonderful piece de 
Interpretatione, which has the faculty of teaching 
its readers to find out a meaning in everything but 
itself, like commentators on the Revelations, who 
proceed prophets without understanding a syllable 
of the text. " Brothers," said he, '* you are to be 
informed, that of wills duo sunt genera,^ nuncupa- 
tory * and scriptory ; that in the scriptory will here 
before us, there is no precept or mention about gold 
lace, conceditur: ^ but, si idem airirmetxir de mtncu- 
patorio, negatur.^ For, brothers, if you remember, 

1 Profound silence. 

2 Belong in a way to the essentials. 
8 There are two kinds. 

4 By this is meant tradition, allowed by the Roman Catholics 
to have equal authority with the scripture. 

^ It is conceded. 

6 If the same be affirmed about the nuncupatory, the opposite 
is true. 



Swift 49 

we heard a fellow say, when we were boys, that he 
heard my father's man say, that he heard my father 
say, that he would advise his sons to get gold lace 
on their coats, as soon as ever they could procure 
money to buy it," " That is very true," cries the 
other ; " I remember it perfectly well," said the 
third. And so without more ado got the largest 
gold lace in the parish, and walked about as fine 
as lords. 

A while after there came up all in fashion a pretty 
sort of flame-coloured satin for linings; and the 
mercer brought a pattern of it immediately to our 
three gentlemen : " An please your worships," said 

he, " my Lord C and Sir J. W. had linings out 

of this very piece last night; it takes wonderfully, 
and I shall not have a remnant left enough to make 
my wife a pin-cushion, by to-morrow morning at 
ten o'clock." Upon this, they fell again to rummage 
the will, because the present case also required a 
positive precept, the lining being held by orthodox 
writers to be of the essence of the coat. After long 
search, they could fix upon nothing to the matter in 
hand, except a short advice of their father's in the 
will, to take care of fire, and put out their candles 
before they went to sleep.-^ This, though a good 
deal for the purpose, and helping very far towards 
self-conviction, yet not seeming wholly of force to es- 
tablish a command ; and being resolved to avoid far- 
ther scruple, as well as future occasion for scandal, 
says he that was the scholar, " I remember to have 
read in wills of a codicil annexed, which is indeed 
a part of the will, and what it contains hath equal 

1 That is, to take care of hell ; and, in order to do that, to 
subdue and extinguish their lusts. 

4 



50 Best English Essays 

authority with the rest. Now, I have been consid- 
ering of this same will here before us, and I cannot 
reckon it to be complete for want of such a codicil : 
I will therefore fasten one in its proper place very 
dexterously : I have had it by me some time ; it was 
written by a dog-keeper of my grandfather's.^ and 
talks a great deal, (as good luck would have it,) 
of this very flame-coloured satin." The project was 
immediately approved by the other two; an old 
parchment scroll was tagged on according to art, in 
the form of a codicil annexed, and the satin bought 
and worn. 

Next winter a player, hired for the purpose by the 
corporation of fringe-makers, acted his part in a 
new comedy, all covered with silver fringe, and, 
according to the laudable custom, gave rise to that 
fashion. Upon which the brothers, consulting their 
father's will, to their great astonishment found these 
words ; '* Iteniy I charge and command my said 
three sons to wear no»sort of silver fringe upon or 
about their said coats," etc., with a penalty, in case 
of disobedience, too long here to insert. However, 
after some pause, the brother so often mentioned 
for his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms, 
had found in a certain author, which he said should 
be nameless, that the same word, which, in the will, 
is called fringe, does also signify a broom-stick, and 
doubtless ought to have the same interpretation in 
this paragraph. This another of the brothers dis- 
liked, because of that epithet silver, which could not, 
he humbly conceived, in propriety of speech, be 
reasonably applied to a broom-stick; but it was 

1 This refers to that part of the Apocrypha where mention is 
made of Tobit and his dog. 



Swift 5 1 

replied upon him, that his epithet was understood in 
a mythological and allegorical sense. However, he 
objected again, why their father should forbid them 
to wear a broom-stick on their coats, a caution that 
seemed unnatural and impertinent; upon which he 
was taken up short, as one who spoke irreverently 
of a mystery, which doubtless was very useful and 
significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried 
into, or nicely reasoned upon. And, in short, their 
father's authority being now considerably sunk, this 
expedient was allowed to serve as a lawful dispen- 
sation for wearing their full proportion of silver 
fringe. 

A while after was revived an old fashion, long 
antiquated, of embroidery with Indian figures of 
men, women, and children. Here they remembered 
but too well how their father had always abhorred 
this fashion; that he made several paragraphs on 
purpose, importing his utter detestation of it, and 
bestowing his everlasting curse to his sons, when- 
ever they should wear it. For all this, in a few days 
they appeared higher in the fashion than anybody 
else in the town. But they solved the matter by say- 
ing, that these figures were not at all the same with 
those that were formerly worn, and were meant in 
the will. Besides, they did not wear them iii the 
sense as forbidden by their father; but as they 
were a commendable custom, and of great use to 
the public. That these rigorous clauses in the will 
did therefore require some allowance, and a fa- 
vourable interpretation, and ought to be understood 
cum grano salis,'^ 

But fashions perpetually altering in that age, the 

1 With a grain of salt. 



52 Best English Essays 

scholastic brother grew weary of searching farther 
evasions, and solving everlasting contradictions. 
Resolved, therefore, at all hazards, to comply with 
the modes of the world, they concerted matters to- 
gether, and agreed unanimously to lock up their 
father's will in a strong box, brought out of Greece 
or Italy, (I have forgot which,) and trouble them- 
selves no farther to examine it, but only refer to its 
authority whenever they thought fit. In conse- 
quence whereof, a while after it grew a general 
mode to wear an infinite number of points, most of 
them tagged with silver: upon which, the scholar 
pronounced ex cathedra, that points were absolutely 
jure paterno, as they might very well remember. 
'T is true, indeed, the fashion prescribed somewhat 
more than were directly named in the will; how- 
ever, that they, as heirs-general of their father, had 
power to make and add certain clauses for public 
emolument, though not deducible, totidem verbis, 
from the letter of the will, or else multa absurda 
seqiierentiir} This was understood for canonical, 
and therefore, on the following Sunday, they came 
to church all covered with points. 

1 Many absurdities would follow. 



Ill 



ADDISON 



ADDISON: 
FIRST OF THE HUMORISTS 

THE English essay as represented by 
Bacon and Swift was based on purely 
classic models, as far as its literary style 
is concerned, and if it had not been for the advent 
of Steele and Addison there might never have 
been such a thing as the distinctive English essay. 
Though it is hardly safe to call anything original, 
we may be permitted, perhaps, to consider the 
style of writing represented in the " Spectator " 
as a peculiarly English development. Of course 
there was Montaigne; but Addison would have 
been what he is even if Montaigne had never 
existed. 

It seems hard for Richard Steele that while he 
is the acknowledged inventor of the gossipy paper 
about town humors, his friend Addison has got- 
ten all the glory. The fact is, in itself the style 
of Steele is more fascinating than Addison's even 
to us to-day, and if essays were to be selected for 
their style alone, some of Steele's would have to 
be included. But you may search the " Tatler," 
the " Spectator," and the " Guardian " from end 
to end, and every paper whose subject seems to 



56 Best English Essays 

make it worth preserving as part of a permanent 
literature turns out to be Addison's. Steele was 
a good journalist, and as a retailer of current 
gossip he was excellent ; but it was Addison who 
raised his gossip to the plane of universal interest. 

We have already pointed out the fact that the 
" Spectator " was in reality a sort of printed let- 
ter, received every morning by the people of the 
town and read with their other letters. Its sub- 
ject was naturally the little things of life, the 
humors of life, and its charm lay in its humor. 
It is characteristically English, and no other style 
has had such a widespread influence on English 
writers. Johnson and Goldsmith adopted it; 
Johnson not quite successfully. Goldsmith with 
surpassing success in his novel '' The Vicar of 
Wakefield." Charles Lamb was a lineal literary 
descendant of Addison, and as far as his style 
is concerned, so was Thackeray. Without ques- 
tion Lamb and Thackeray both surpassed their 
original. 

Because of the debt that so many great writers 
owe to Addison, he has been extravagantly 
praised by them, and the echo of their mighty 
words is still reverberating. In his " Primer of 
English Literature," so eminent a critic as Stop- 
ford Brooke, after justly describing Addison's 
" fine and tender " humor, declares of his style 
that " in its varied cadence and subtle ease it has 
never been surpassed." " This," says Matthew 
Arnold, '' seems to me to be going a little too 



Addison 57 

far. One could not say more of Plato's. What- 
ever his services to his time, Addison is for us 
now a writer whose range and force of thought 
are not considerable enough to make him in- 
teresting; and his style cannot equal in varied 
cadence and subtle ease the style of a man 
like Plato/^DCcause without range and force of 
thought air resources of style, whether in cadence 
or in subtlety, are not and cannot be brought 
out." /Arnold might also have pointed to the two 
English writers who have surpassed Addison on 
his own ground. The hero of the " Spectator" 
is of interest to us because he is the iirst of the 
humorists, and because his essays, lacking the 
subtlety of later writers, are simpler models for 
our study. Franklin found in them excellent 
exercises for the beginner in composition, and to 
this day none better have been found. 



SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY IN THE 
COUNTRY 

Sir Roger at Home 

HAVING often received an invitation from my 
friend Sir Roger de Coverley to pass away a 
month with him in the country, I last week accom- 
panied him thither, and am settled with him for 
some time at his country-house, where I intend to 
form several of my ensuing speculations. Sir 
Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humour. 



58 Best English Essays 

lets me rise and go to bed when I please; dine at 
his own table, or in my chamber, as I think fit ; sit 
still, and say nothing, without bidding me be merry. 
When the gentlemen of the country come to see 
him, he only shows me at a distance. As I have 
been walking in his fields, I have observed them 
stealing a sight of me over an hedge, and have 
heard the knight desiring them not to let me see 
them, for that I hated to be stared at. 

I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family, 
because it consists of sober and staid persons ; for 
as the knight is the best master in the world, he 
seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved 
by all about him, his servants never care for leaving 
him: by this means his domestics are all in years, 
and grown old with their master. You would take 
his valet de chambre for his brother; his butler is 
gray-headed ; his groom is one of the gravest men 
that I have ever seen ; and his coachman has the 
looks of a privy-councillor. You see the goodness 
of the master even in the old house-dog; and in a 
gray pad, that is kept in the stable with great care 
and tenderness out of regard to his past services, 
though he has been useless for several years. 

I could not but observe with a great deal of pleas- 
ure, the joy that appeared in the countenances of 
these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at 
his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain 
from tears at the sight of their old master; every 
one of them pressed forward to do something for 
him, and seemed discouraged if they were not em- 
ployed. At the same time the good old knight, with 
a mixture of the father and the master of the family, 
tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with 



Addison 



59 



several kind questions relating to themselves. This 
humanity and good-nature engages everybody to 
him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, 
all his family are in good humour, and none so much 
as the person whom he diverts himself with : on the 
contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of 
old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a 
secret concern in the looks of all his servants. 

My worthy friend has put me under the particular 
care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, 
as well as the rest of his fellow-servants, wonder- 
fully desirous of pleasing me, because they have 
often heard their master talk of me as of his par- 
ticular friend. 

My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting 
himself in the woods or the fields, is a very vener- 
able man, who is ever with Sir Roger, and has lived 
at his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty 
years. This gentleman is a person of good sense, 
and some learning, of a very regular life, and oblig- 
ing conversation : he heartily loves Sir Roger, and 
knows that he is very much in the old knight's es- 
teem; so that he lives in the family rather as a 
relation than a dependant. 

I have observed in several of my papers, that my 
friend Sir Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is 
something of an humourist ; and that his virtues, as 
well as imperfections, are, as it were, tinged by a 
certain extravagance, which makes them particu- 
larly his, and distinguishes them from those of other 
men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very 
innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation 
highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same 
degree of sense and virtue would appear in their 



6o Best English Essays 

common and ordinary colours. As I was walking 
with him last night, he asked me how I liked the 
good man whom I have just now mentioned; and, 
without staying for my answer, told me, that he 
was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at 
his own table ; for which reason, he desired a par- 
ticular friend of his at the University, to find him 
out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much 
learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable 
temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a 
little of backgammon. My friend (says Sir Roger) 
found me out this gentleman, who, besides the en- 
dowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good 
scholar, though he does not show it. I have given 
him the parsonage of the parish; and because I 
know his value, have settled upon him a good an- 
nuity for life. If he outlives me, he shall find that 
he was higher in my esteem than perhaps he thinks 
he is. He has now been with me thirty years ; and, 
though he does not know I have taken notice of it, 
has never in all that time asked anything of me for 
himself, though he is every day soliciting me for 
something in behalf of one or other of my tenants, 
his parishioners. There has not been a lawsuit in 
the parish since he has lived among them: if any 
dispute arises, they apply themselves to him for the 
decision ; if they do not acquiesce in his judgment, 
which I think never happened above once, or twice 
at most, they appeal to me. At his first settling with 
me, I made him a present of all the good sermons 
which have been printed in English, and only begged 
of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one 
of them in the pulpit. Accordingly, he has digested 
them into such a series, that they follow one another 



Addison 6i 

naturally, and make a continued system of practical 
divinity. 

As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the 
gentleman we were talking of came up to us ; and 
upon the knight's asking him who preached to- 
morrow (for it was Saturday night), told us, the 
Bishop of St. Asaph in the morning, and Dr. South 
in the afternoon. He then showed us his list of 
preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a 
great deal of pleasure. Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop 
Saunderson, Doctor Barrow, Doctor Calamy, with 
several living authors who have published dis- 
courses of practical divinity. I no sooner saw this 
venerable man in the pulpit, but I very much ap- 
proved of my friend's insisting upon the qualifica- 
tions of a good aspect and a clear voice ; for I was 
so charmed with the gracefulness of his figure and 
delivery, as well as the discourses he pronounced, 
that I think I never passed any time more to my 
satisfaction. A sermon repeated after this manner, 
is Hke the composition of a poet in the mouth of a 
graceful actor. 

I could heartily wish that more of our country 
clergy would follow this example, and, instead of 
wasting their spirits in laborious compositions of 
their own, would endeavour after a handsome elo- 
cution, and all those other talents that are proper to 
enforce what has been penned by greater masters. 
This would not only be more easy to themselves, 
but more edifying to the people. 



62 Best English Essays 



Sir Roger and Will Wimble 

AS I was yesterday morning walking with Sir 
Roger before his house, a country fellow 
brought him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr. 
William Wimble had caught that very morning; 
and that he presented it with his service to him, and 
intended to come and dine with him. At the same 
time he delivered a letter, which my friend read to 
me as soon as the messenger left him. 

" Sir Roger, — I desire you to accept of a Jack, 
which is the best I have caught this season. I in- 
tend to come and stay with you a week, and see 
how the Perch bite in the Black river. I observed 
with some concern, the last time I saw you upon the 
Bowling-green, that your whip wanted a lash to it : 
I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last 
week which I hope will serve you all the time you 
are in the country. I have not been out of the saddle 
for six days last past, having been at Eaton with 
Sir John's eldest son. He takes to his learning 
hugely. 

" I am. Sir, your humble Servant, 

" Will Wimble." 

This extraordinary letter, and message that ac- 
companied it, made me very curious to know the 
character and quality of the gentleman who sent 
them ; which I found to be as follows. Will 
Wimble is younger brother to a baronet, and de- 
scended of the ancient family of the Wimbles. He 
is now between forty and fifty; but being bred to 



Addison 6^ 

no business, and born to no estate, he generally lives 
with his elder brother as superintendent of his 
game. He hunts a pack of dogs better than any 
man in the country, and is very famous for finding 
out a hare. He is extremely well versed in all the 
little handicrafts of an idle man : he makes a May- 
fly to a miracle; and furnishes the whole country 
with angle-rods. As he is a good-natured, officious 
fellow, and very much esteemed upon account of 
his family, he is a welcome guest at every house, 
and keeps up a good correspondence among all the 
gentlemen about him. He carries a tulip root in 
his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a 
puppy between a couple of friends that live perhaps 
in the opposite sides of the county. Will is a par- 
ticular favourite of all the young heirs, whom he 
frequently obliges with a net that he has weaved, or 
a setting-dog that he has made himself ; he now and 
then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting 
to their mothers or sisters ; and raises a great deal 
of mirth among them, by inquiring, as often as he 
meets them, " how they wear ? " These gentleman- 
like manufactures, and obliging little humours, make 
Will the darling of the country. 

Sir Roger was proceeding in the character of him, 
when he saw him make up to us with two or three 
hazel-twigs in his hand, that he had cut in Sir 
Roger's woods, as he came through them in his way 
to the house. I was very much pleased to observe 
on one side the hearty and sincere welcome with 
which Sir Roger received him, and on the other, 
the secret joy which his guest discovered at sight of 
the good old knight. After the first salutes were 
over, Will desired Sir Roger to lend him one of his 



64 Best English Essays 

servants to carry a set of shuttlecocks, he had with 
him in a little box, to a lady that lived about a mile 
off, to whom it seems he had promised such a pres- 
ent for above this half-year. Sir Roger's back was 
no sooner turned, but honest Will began to tell me 
of a large cock pheasant that he had sprung in one 
of the neighbouring woods, with two or three other 
adventures of the same nature. Odd and uncom- 
mon characters are the game that I look for, and 
most delight in ; for which reason I was as much 
pleased with the novelty of the person that talked to 
me, as he could be for his life with the springing of 
a pheasant, and therefore listened to him with more 
than ordinary attention. 

In the midst of his discourse the bell rung to din- 
ner, where the gentleman I have been speaking of 
had the pleasure of seeing the huge Jack, he had 
caught, served up for the first dish in a most sump- 
tuous manner. Upon our sitting down to it, he 
gave us a long account how he had hooked it, played 
with it, foiled it, and at length drew it out upon the 
bank, with several other particulars, that lasted all 
the first course. A dish of wild fowl, that came 
afterwards, furnished conversation for the rest of 
the dinner, which concluded with a late invention of 
Will's for improving the quail-pipe. 

Upon withdrawing into my room after dinner, 
I was secretly touched with compassion towards the 
honest gentleman that had dined with us ; and could 
not but consider, with a great deal of concern, how 
so good an heart, and such busy hands, were wholly 
employed in trifles ; that so much humanity should 
be so Httle beneficial to others, and so much industry 
so little advantageous to himself. The same temper 



Addison 65 

of mind, and application to affairs, might have 
recommended him to the pubHc esteem, and have 
raised his fortune in another station of Hfe. What 
good to his country, or himself, might not a trader 
or merchant have done with such useful, though 
ordinary, qualifications ? 

Will Wimble's is the case of many a younger 
brother of a great family, who had rather see their 
children starve like gentlemen, than thrive in a 
trade or profession that is beneath their quality. 
This humour fills several parts of Europe with pride 
and beggary. It is the happiness of a trading 
nation, like ours, that the younger sons, though 
incapable of any liberal art or profession, may be 
placed in such a way of life, as may perhaps enable 
them to vie with the best of their family: accord- 
ingly, we find several citizens that were launched 
mto the world with narrow fortunes, rising by an 
honest industry to greater estates than those of their 
elder brothers. It is not improbable but Will was 
formerly tried at divinity, law, or physic; and that 
finding his genius did not lie that way, his parents 
gave him up at length to his own inventions. But 
certainly, however improper he might have been 
for studies of a higher nature, he was perfectly well 
turned for the occupations of trade and commerce. 



Sir Roger at Church '. 

I AM always very well pleased with a country 
Sunday ; and think, if keeping holy the seventh 
day were only a human institution, it would be the 
best method that could have been thought of for the 



66 Best English Essays 

polishing and civilising of mankind. It is certain 
the country-people would soon degenerate into a 
kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such 
frequent returns of a stated time, in which the whole 
village meet together with their best faces, and in 
their cleanHest habits, to converse with one another 
upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained 
to them, and join together in adoration of the 
Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of 
the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their 
minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both 
the sexes upon appearing in their most agreeable 
forms, and exerting all such qualities as are apt to 
give them a figure in the eye of the village. A 
country-fellow distinguishes himself as much in the 
churchyard as a citizen does upon the Change, the 
whole parish-politics being generally discussed in 
that place either after sermon or before the bell 
rings. 

My friend Sir Roger, being a good churchman, 
has beautified the inside of his church with several 
texts of his own choosing; he has likewise given 
a handsome pulpit-cloth, and railed in the com- 
munion-table at his own expense. He has often 
told me, that at his coming to his estate he found his 
parishioners very irregular; and that in order to 
make them kneel and join in the responses, he gave 
every one of them a hassock and a Common-Prayer 
Book; and at the same time employed an itinerant 
singing-master, who goes about the country for that 
purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes of the 
psalms ; tipon which they now very much value 
themselves, and indeed out-do most of the country 
churches that I have ever heard. 



Addison 67 

As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congrega- 
tion, he keeps them in very good order, and will 
suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself; for if 
by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at 
sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and 
looks about him, and if he sees anybody else nod- 
ding, either wakes them himself, or sends his ser- 
vant to them. Several other of the old knight's 
particularities break out upon these occasions; 
sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse in the 
singing-psalms, half a minute after the rest of the 
congregation have done with it; sometimes, when 
he is pleased with the matter of his devotion, he 
pronounces Amen three or four times to the same 
prayer; and sometimes stands up when everybody 
else is upon their knees, to count the congregation, 
or see if any of his tenants are missing. 

I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my 
old friend, in the midst of the service, calling out to 
one John Matthews to mind what he was about, and 
not disturb the congregation. This John Matthews, 
it seems, is remarkable for being an idle fellow, and 
at that time was kicking his heels for his diversion. 
This authority of the knight, though exerted in that 
odd manner which accompanies him in all circum- 
stances of life, has a very good effect upon the 
parish, who are not polite enough to see anything 
ridiculous in his behaviour ; besides that the general 
good sense and worthiness of his character, make 
his friends observe these little singularities as foils 
that rather set off than blemish his good qualities. 

As soon as the sermon is finished, nobody pre- 
sumes to stir till Sir Roger is gone out of the church. 
The knight walks down from his seat in the chan- 



68 Best English Essays 

eel between a double row of his tenants, that stand 
bowing to him on each side; and every now and 
then he inquires how such an one's wife, or mother, 
or son, or father do, whom he does not see at 
church ; which is understood as a secret reprimand 
to the person that is absent. 

The chaplain has often told me, that upon a cate- 
chising-day, when Sir Roger has been pleased with 
a boy that answers well, he has ordered a Bible to 
be given him next day for his encouragement ; and 
sometimes accompanies it with a flitch of bacon to 
his mother. Sir Roger has likewise added five 
pounds a year to the clerk's place ; and that he may 
encourage the young fellows to make themselves 
perfect in the church-service, has promised, upon 
the death of the present incumbent, who is very old, 
to bestow it according to merit. 

The fair understanding between Sir Roger and 
his chaplain, and their mutual concurrence in doing 
good, is the more remarkable, because the very next 
village is famous for the differences and conten- 
tions that rise between the parson and the squire, 
who live in a perpetual state of war. The parson 
is always at the squire, and the squire, to be re- 
venged on the parson, never comes to church. The 
squire has made all his tenants atheists and tithe- 
stealers ; while the parson instructs them every 
Sunday in the dignity of his order, and insinuates 
to them, almost in every sermon, that he is a better 
man than his patron. In short, matters are come to 
such an extremity, that the squire has not said his 
prayers either in public or private this half year; 
and that the parson threatens him, if he does not 
mend his manners, to pray for him in the face of 
the whole congregation. 



Addison 69 

Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the 
country, are very fatal to the ordinary people; who 
are so used to be dazzled with riches, that they pay 
as much deference to the understanding of a man 
of an estate, as of a man of learning; and are very 
hardly brought to regard any truth, how important 
soever it may be, that is preached to them, when 
they know there are several men of five hundred a 
year who do not beheve it. 



THE MAN OF THE TOWN 

MY friend Will Honeycomb values himself very 
much upon what he calls the knowledge of 
mankind, which has cost him many disasters in his 
youth; for Will reckons every misfortune that he 
has met with among the women, and every ren- 
counter among the men, as parts of his education, 
and fancies he should never have been the man he 
is, had not he broke windows, knocked down con- 
stables, and disturbed honest people with his mid- 
night serenades, when he was a young fellow. The 
engaging in adventures of this nature Will calls the 
studying of mankind ; and terms this knowledge of 
the town, the knowledge of the world. Will in- 
genuously confesses, that for half his life his head 
ached every morning with reading of men over- 
night; and at present comforts himself under cer- 
tain pains which he endures from time to time, that 
without them he could not have been acquainted 
with the gallantries of the age. This Will looks 
upon as the learning of a gentleman, and regards 
all other kinds of science as the accomplishments 



yo Best English Essays 

of one whom he calls a scholar, a bookish man, or 
a philosopher. 

For these reasons Will shines in mixed company, 
where he has the discretion not to go out of his 
depth, and has often a certain way of making his 
real ignorance appear a seeming one. Our club, 
however, has frequently caught him tripping, at 
which times they never spare him. For as Will 
often insults us with the knowledge of the town, 
we sometimes take our revenge upon him by our 
knowledge of books. 

He was last week producing two or three letters 
which he writ in his youth to a coquette lady. The 
raillery of them was natural, and well enough for a 
mere man of the town ; but, very unluckily, several 
of the words were wrong spelt. Will laughed this 
off at first as well as he could, but finding himself 
pushed on all sides, and especially by the templar, 
he told us, with a little passion, that he never Hked 
pedantry in spelling, and that he spelt like a gentle- 
man, and not like a scholar: upon this Will had 
recourse to his old topic of showing the narrow- 
spiritedness, the pride, and ignorance of pedants; 
which he carried so far, that upon my retiring to 
my lodgings, I could not forbear throwing together 
such reflections as occurred to me upon that subject. 

A man who has been brought up among books, 
and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indiffer- 
ent companion, and what we call a pedant. But, 
methinks, we should enlarge the title, and give it 
every one that does not know how to think out of 
his profession, and particular way of life. 

What is a greater pedant than a mere man of the 
town ? Bar him the play-houses, a catalogue of the 



Addison 71 

reigning beauties, and an account of a few fashion- 
able distempers that have befallen him, and you 
strike him dumb. How many a pretty gentleman's 
knowledge lies all within the verge of the court? 
He will tell you the names of the principal favour- 
ites, repeat the shrewd sayings of a man of quality, 
whisper an intrigue that is not yet blown upon by 
common fame ; or, if the sphere of his observations 
is a little larger than ordinary, will perhaps enter 
into all the incidents, turns, and revolutions in a 
game of ombre. When he has gone thus far, he has 
shown you the whole circle of his accomplishments, 
his parts are drained, and he is disabled from any 
further conversation. What are these but rank 
pedants ? and yet these are the men who value them- 
selves most on their exemption from the pedantry 
of colleges. 

I might here mention the military pedant, who 
always talks in a camp, and is storming towns, 
making lodgments and fighting battles from one end 
of the year to the other. Everything he speaks 
smells of gunpowder ; if you take away his artillery 
from him, he has not a word to say for himself. I 
might likewise mention the law pedant, that is per- 
petually putting cases, repeating the transactions 
of Westminster Hall, wrangling with you upon the 
most indifferent circumstances of life, and not to 
be convinced of the distance of a place, or of the 
most trivial point in conversation, but by dint of 
argument. The state pedant is wrapped up in news, 
and lost in politics. If you mention either of the 
kings of Spain or Poland, he talks very notably; 
but if you go out of the gazette you drop him. In 
short, a mere courtier, a mere soldier, a mere 



y2 Best English Essays 

scholar, a mere anything, is an insipid pedantic 
character, and equally ridiculous. 

Of all the species of pedants, which I have men- 
tioned, the book pedant is much the most support- 
able; he has at least an exercised understanding, 
and a head which is full though confused, so that a 
man who converses with him may often receive 
from him hints of things that are worth knowing, 
and what he may possibly turn to his own advan- 
tage, though they are of little use to the owner. 
The worst kind of pedants among learned men, are 
such as are naturally endowed with a very small 
share of common sense, and have read a great 
number of books without taste or distinction. 
. The truth of it is, learning, like travelling, and all 
other methods of improvement, as it finishes good 
sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times 
more insufferable, by supplying variety of matter 
to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity 
of abounding in absurdities. 



THE FAN EXERCISE 

I DO not know whether to call the following 
letter a satire upon coquettes, or a representa- 
tion of their several fantastical accompHshments, or 
what other title to give it ; but as it is I shall com- 
municate it to the public. It will sufficiently explain 
its own intentions, so that I shall give it my reader 
at length, without either preface or postscript. 

" Mr. Spectator, — Women are armed with 
fans as men with swords, and sometimes do more 



Addison 



73 



execution with them. To the end, therefore, that 
ladies may be entire mistresses of the weapon which 
they bear, I have erected an Academy for the train- 
ing up of young women in the Exercise of the Fan, 
according to the most fashionable airs and motions 
that are now practised at court. The ladies who 
carry fans under me are drawn up twice a day in 
my great hall, where they are instructed in the use 
of their arms, and exercised by the following words 
of command: 

Handle your Fans, 
Unftcrl your Faiis, 
Discharge your Fans^ 
Ground your Faiis, 
Recover your Fans, 
Flutter your Fans. 

By the right observation of these few plain words 
of command, a woman of a tolerable genius who 
will apply herself diligently to her exercise for the 
space of one half year, shall be ah^le to give her 
fan all the graces that can possibly enter into that 
little modish machine. 

" But to the end that my readers may form to 
themselves a right notion of this exercise, I beg 
leave to explain it to them in all its parts. When 
my female regiment is drawn up in array, with 
every one her weapon in her hand, upon my giving 
the word to Handle their Fans, each of them shakes 
her fan at me with a smile, then gives her right- 
hand "woman a tap upon the shoulder, then presses 
her lips with the extremity of her fan, then lets her 
arms fall in an easy motion, and stands in readiness 
to receive the next word of command. All this is 
done with a close fan, and is generally learned in 
the first week. 



74 Best English Essays 

" The next motion is that of Unfurling the Fan, 
in which are comprehended several little flirts and 
vibrations, as also gradual and deliberate openings, 
with many voluntary fallings asunder in the fan 
itself, that are seldom learned under a month's prac- 
tice. This part of the exercise pleases the specta- 
tors more than any other, as it discovers on a sudden 
an infinite number of Cupids, garlands, altars, birds, 
beasts, rainbows, and the like agreeable figures, that 
display themselves to view, whilst every one in the 
regiment holds a picture in her hand. 

" Upon m.y giving the word to Discharge their 
Fans, they give one general crack, that may be 
heard at a. considerable distance when the wind sits 
fair. This is one of the most difficult parts of the 
exercise ; but I have several ladies with me, who at 
their first entrance could not give a pop loud enough 
to be heard at the further end of a room, who can 
now Discharge a Fan in such a manner, that it shall 
make a report like a pocket-pistol. I have likewise 
taken care (in order to hinder young women from 
letting off their fans in wrong places or unsuitable 
occasions) to show upon what subject the crack of 
a fan may come in properly. I have likewise in- 
vented a fan, with which a girl of sixteen, by the 
help of a little wind which is enclosed about one of 
the largest sticks, can make as loud a crack as a 
woman of fifty with an ordinary fan. 

" When the fans are thus discharged, the word 
of command in course is to Ground their Fans. 
This teaches a lady to quit her fan gracefully when 
she throws it aside, in order to take up a pack of 
cards, adjust a curl of hair, replace a fallen pin, or 
apply herself to any other matter of importance. 



Addison 75 

This part of the exercise, as it only consists in tossing 
a fan with an air upon a long table (which stands 
by for that purpose) may be learnt in two days' 
time as well as in a twelvemonth. 

" When my female regiment is thus disarmed, I 
generally let them walk about the room for some 
time; when on a sudden (like ladies that look upon 
their watches after a long visit) they all of them 
hasten to their arms, catch them up in a hurry, and 
place themselves in their proper stations upon my 
calling out Recover your Fans. This part of the 
exercise is not difficult, provided a woman applies 
her thoughts to it. 

'' The Fluttering of the Fan is the last, and, in- 
deed, the master-piece of the whole exercise; but 
if a lady does not misspend her time, she may make 
herself mistress of it in three months. I generally 
lay aside the dog-days and the hot time of the sum- 
mer for the teaching of this part of the exercise ; for 
as soon as ever I pronounce Flutter your Fans, the 
place is filled with so many zephyrs and gentle 
breezes as are very refreshing in that season of the 
year, though they might be dangerous to ladies of 
a tender constitution in any other. 

" There is an infinite variety of motions to be 
made use of in the Flutter of a Fan : there is the 
angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, 
the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amor- 
ous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any 
emotion in the mind which does not produce a 
suitable agitation in the fan ; insomuch, that if I 
only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very 
well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes. I have 
seen a fan so very angry, that it would have been 



76 Best English Essays 

dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to 
have come within the wind of it ; and at other times 
so very languishing, that I have been glad for the 
lady's sake the lover was at a sufficient distance 
from it. I need not add, that a fan is either a prude 
or coquette, according to the nature of the person 
who bears it. To conclude my letter, I must ac- 
quaint you, that I have from my own observations 
compiled a little treatise for the use of my scholars, 
entitled. The Passions of the Fan; which I will 
communicate to you, if you think it may be of use 
to the public. I shall have a general review on 
Thursday next ; to which you shall be very welcome 
if you will honour it with your presence. 

" I am," etc. 

" P. S. I teach young gentlemen the whole art of 
gallanting a fan. 

'' N. B. I have several little plain fans made for 
this use, to avoid expense." 



IV 

LAMB 



LAMB: 

GREATEST OF THE HUMORISTS 

IN spite of De Quincey's declaration that 
Lamb never could become popular, that his 
literary excellencies were too fine and ex- 
quisite for that, Lamb has proved to be the most 
popular essayist who ever wrote the English lan- 
guage. Though the sum total of his good work 
is very small, his position is as secure as that of 
any writer since Shakespeare. 

Though Lamb may be compared to Addison 
at his best; to Goldsmith, who had much of the 
same overflowing love in his character and is 
all but as fondly loved as Lamb himself; to 
Thackeray, who always was a man of love and 
the humor of love, still Charles Lamb stands 
unique, unimitated and inimitable. 

The only way in which we can understand 
Lamb is in the light of his personal history. His 
father was all his life a servant in the family of a 
Mr. Salt, a barrister. As a reward for faithful 
services on the part of the father, Charles Lamb 
the son was sent to the famous London school of 
Christ's Hospital, where he came into contact 
with Coleridge. From Christ's Hospital Coler- 



8o Best English Essays 

idge went to Oxford, and Lamb to be a clerk in 
the South Sea House. Later he was transferred 
to the India House, from the directors of which 
corporation he drew a salary until he died, a 
period of nearly forty years. 

Soon after he entered the India House, when 
Lamb was twenty-one, his sister Mary, ten years 
his senior, in a passing fit of insanity, killed her 
mother with a table knife. Soon after, their 
father died. Charles was attached to a young 
lady whom he hoped to marry; but he gave up 
his prospect in this direction, and devoted his 
entire life to his sister. She was confined in an 
asylum for a time, but soon recovered her sanity 
and was released upon her brother's making him- 
self personally responsible for her. Her attacks 
of insanity returned many times ; but she herself 
could feel them coming, and we read of their 
going hand in hand across the fields to Hoxton 
(the asylum). Charles himself was confined in 
an asylum for six weeks. 

As an antidote to the blues, and an offset to the 
deathlike cloud always hanging over him. Lamb 
gathered many friends about him, and engaged 
in regular correspondence with some of the best 
known literary characters of his day. As his 
clerical duties did not begin until ten o'clock, and 
ended at four, he had considerable leisure to 
study and cultivate his friends. He wrote some 
verses that were published in a volume with 
Coleridge's, and composed two dramatic pieces, 



Lamb 8 1 

which were unsuccessful. With his sister he re- 
wrote some of Shakespeare's plays in the form 
of tales for children, and that book alone of his 
earlier efforts has become popular. He did some 
editing when he was about thirty-three, after 
which he lapsed into literary silence for twelve 
years. Finally, at the age of forty-five, just five 
years before he was to retire from the India 
House on a pension, he contributed to the "Lon- 
don Magazine," then just rehabilitated, a paper 
on " The South Sea House," signing it " Elia," 
— the name of an Italian fellow-clerk of those 
days of twenty-five years before. The success 
of this paper brought forth the best of the other 
'' Essays of Elia " within a period of three years. 
They were in effect Lamb's letters to his friends 
elaborated into permanent literary form; and 
Lamb's collected " Letters " must stand on every 
bookshelf, side by side with '' Elia." 

Lamb's essays and letters are elaborate play, 
the foolery that best dispels the blue-devils with 
which all humanity is more or less afflicted. 
What he himself had found effective through a 
period of twenty-five years he kindly offers to us. 
The tragedy behind it all, in full view of which 
the essays were written, makes their foolishness 
sublime. If Lamb, by the recipe which he offers, 
could make his life successful and happy under 
the trying conditions which were forced upon 
him and which would certainly have wrecked a 
less truly noble character, what excuse have we 



82 Best English Essays 

for being sad and lugubrious when the sun is 
clouded ? 

Probably the reason why no one has succeeded 
in imitating Lamb's style successfully is that no 
one else has been found to bear what he bore for 
forty years and remain so light, so sweet, so 
gentle, and so good. 



LETTER TO COLERIDGE 

March 9, 1822. 

DEAR C, — It gives me great satisfaction to 
hear that the pig turned out so well/ — they 
are interesting creatures at a certain age; what a 
pity such buds should blow out into the maturity of 
rank bacon ! You had all some of the crackling — 
and brain sauce; did you remember to rub it with 
butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the 
crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly, with no 
(Edipean avulsion ? Was the crackling the colour of 
the ripe pomegranate? Had you no cursed com- 
plement of boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt 
the edge of delicate desire? Did you flesh maiden 
teeth in it ? Not that I sent the pig, or can form the 
remotest guess what part Owen could play in the 
business. I never knew him give anything away in 
my life. He would not begin with strangers. I 
suspect the pig, after all, was meant for me ; but at 
the unlucky juncture of time being absent, the pres- 
ent somehow went round to Highgate. To confess 

1 Some one had sent Coleridge a pig, and the gift was errone- 
ously credited to Lamb. 



Lamb S^ 

an honest truth, a pig is one of those things I could 
never think of sending away. Teals, widgeons, 
snipes, barn-door fowl, ducks, geese, — your tame 
villatic things, — Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, 
sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss 
cheeses, French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I 
impart as freely unto my friends as to myself. They 
are but self-extended ; but pardon me if I stop some- 
where. Where the fine feeling of benevolence 
giveth a higher smack than the sensual rarity, there 
my friends (or any good man) may command me; 
but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein am nearest 
to myself. Nay, I should think it an affront, an 
undervaluing done to Nature, who bestowed such 
a boon upon me, if in a churlish mood I parted with 
the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs I ever 
felt of remorse was when a child. My kind old 
aunt had strained her pocket-strings to bestow a 
sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way 
home through the Borough, I met a venerable old 
man, not a mendicant, but thereabouts, — a look- 
beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the cox- 
combry of taught-charity, I gave away the cake to 
him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an 
Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old 
aunt's kindness crossed me, — the sum it was to 
her; the pleasure she had a right to expect that I 
— not the old impostor — should take in eating her 
cake; the cursed ingratitude by which, under the 
colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her 
cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to 
heart so grievously that I think I never suffered the 
like; and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling 
hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. 



84 Best English Essays 

The cake has long been masticated, consigned to 
dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper. 

But when Providence, who is better to us all than 
our aunts, gives me a pig, remembering my temp- 
tation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act towards 
it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose. 

Yours (short of pig) to command in everything, 

C. L. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which 
my friend M. was obliging enough to read 
and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand 
ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from 
the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to 
this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by 
their great Confucius in the second chapter of his 
Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind 
of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the 
Cooks' Ploliday. The manuscript goes on to say, 
that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I 
take to be the elder brother) was accidentally dis- 
covered in the manner follovv^ing. The swine-herd, 
Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, 
as his m.anner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left 
his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a 
great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with 
fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some 
sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling 
quickly, spread the conflagration over every part 
of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. 
Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian 



Lamb 85 

make-shift of a building, you may think it), what 
was of much more importance, a fine Utter of new- 
farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, per- 
ished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all 
over the East, from the remotest periods that we 
read of. Bp-bo was in the utmost consternation, as 
you may think, not so much for the sake of the tene- 
ment, which his father and he could easily build up 
again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an 
hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. 
While he was thinking what he should say to his 
father, and wringing his hands over the smoking 
remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an 
odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which 
he had before experienced. What could it proceed 
from ? — not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt 
that smell before — indeed, this was by no means the 
first accident of the kind which had occurred through 
the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. 
Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, 
weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the 
same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not 
what to think. He next stooped down to feel the 
pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt 
his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his 
booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs 
of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, 
and for the first time in his life (in the world's life 
indeed, for before him no man had known it) he 
tasted — crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at 
the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he 
licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at 
length broke into his slow understanding, that it 
was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so 



86 Best English Essays 

delicious ; and surrendering himself up to the new- 
born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls 
of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was 
cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, 
when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, 
armed with retributory cudg'el, and finding how 
affairs 'stood, began to rain blows upon the young 
rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which 
Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been 
flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced 
in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous 
to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote 
quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not 
beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an 
end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of 
his situation, something like the following dialogue 
ensued. 

" You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt 
me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and 
be hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, and 
I know not what — what have you got there, I 
say?" 

** O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste 
how nice the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed 
his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should 
beget a son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened 
since morning, soon raked out another pig, and 
fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by 
main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, 
" Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — 
O Lord!" — with such-like barbarous ejaculations, 
cramming all the while as if he would choke. 



Lamb 87 

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the 
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not 
put his son to death for an unnatural young mon- 
ster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it 
had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to 
them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, 
make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, 
proved not altogether displeasing to him. In con- 
clusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), 
both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and 
never left off till they had despatched all that re- 
mained of the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret 
escape, for the neighbours would certainly have 
stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, 
who could think of improving upon the good meat 
which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange 
stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's 
cottage was burnt down now more frequently than 
ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. 
Some would break out in broad day, others in the 
night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure 
was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti 
himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of 
chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent 
to him than ever. At length they were watched, 
the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son 
summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an in- 
considerable assize town. Evidence was given, the 
obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict 
about to be pronounced, w^hen the foreman of the 
jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which 
the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the 
box. He handled it, and they all handled it; and 



88 Best English Essays 

burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had 
done before them, and nature prompting to each of 
them the same remedy, against the face of all the 
facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever 
given, — to the surprise of the whole court, towns- 
folk, strangers, reporters, and all present — without 
leaving the box, or any manner of consultation what- 
ever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not 
Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at 
the manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the 
court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all 
the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a 
few days his lordship's town-house was observed to 
be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was 
nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel 
and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. 
The insurance-offices one and all shut up shop. 
People built slighter and slighter every day, until it 
was feared that the very science of architecture 
would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus 
this custom of firing houses continued, till in process 
of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our 
Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, 
or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked 
(burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of 
consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first 
began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the 
string or spit came in a century or two later, I 
forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, 
concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and 
seemingly the most obvious, arts make their way 
among mankind 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account 



Lamb 89 

above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy 
pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting 
houses on fire (especially in these days) could be 
assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pre- 
text and excuse might be found in roast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis,^ 
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
obsoniorum.^ 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things be- 
tween pig and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a 
young and tender suckling — under a moon old — 
guiltless as yet of the sty — with no original speck 
of the amor immunditicE ,^ the hereditary failing of 
the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not 
broken, but something between a childish treble and 
a grumble — the mild forerunner or prculiidium of 
a grunt. 

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our 
ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a 
sacrifice of the exterior tegument! 

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to 
that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over- 
roasted, crackling, as it is well called — the very 
teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at 
this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resist- 
ance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it 
not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up 
to it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped 
in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first inno- 
cence — the cream and quintessence of the child- 
pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but a kind 
of animal manna — or, rather, fat and lean (if it 

1 Edible world. 2 Chief of viands. 

* Love of uncleanness. 



90 Best English Essays 

must be so) so blended and running into each other, 
that both together make but one ambrosian result or 
common substance. 

Behold him while he is " doing " — it seemeth 
rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, 
that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth 
round the string! Now he is just done. To see the 
extreme sensibility of that tender age! he hath 
wept out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shoot- 
ing stars. — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek 
he lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent 
grow up to the grossness and indocility which too 
often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one 
he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an ob- 
stinate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all 
manner of filthy conversation — from these sins he 
is happily snatched away — 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care — 

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, 
while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — 
no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages — he 
hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the 
judicious epicure — and for such a tomb might be 
content to die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. 
She is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, 
if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a 
tender-conscienced person would do well to pause 
— too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and 
excoriateth the Hps that approach her — Hke lovers' 
kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on 



Lamb 9 1 

pain from the fierceness and insanity of her reUsh 
— but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not 
with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might 
barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less pro- 
vocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the 
criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong 
man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth 
not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle 
of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and 
not to be unravelled without hazard, he is — good 
throughout. No part of him is better or worse than 
another. He helpeth, as far as his little means 
extend, all around. He is the least envious of ban- 
quets. He is all neighbours' fare. 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly 
impart a share of the good things of this life which 
fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a 
friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my 
friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satis- 
factions, as in mine own. *' Presents," I often say, 
" endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, 
snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic 
fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, 
I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to 
taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. 
But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, 
like Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon 
pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of 
all good flavours to extra-domiciliate, or send out of 
the house slightingly (under pretext of friendship, 
or I know not what) a blessing so particularly 
adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual 
palate. — It argues an insensibility. 



92 Best English Essays 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at 
school. My good old aunt, who never parted from 
me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet- 
meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dis- 
missed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, 
fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was 
over London Bridge) a gray-headed old beggar sa- 
luted me (I have no doubt, at this time of day, that 
he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console 
him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the 
very coxcombry of charity, school-boy like, I made 
him a present of — the whole cake! I walked on 
a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with 
a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but, before I 
had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings 
returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how un- 
grateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give 
her good gift away to a stranger that I had never 
seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught 
I knew ; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt 
would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and 
not another — would eat her nice cake — and what 
should I say to her the next time I saw her — how 
naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! — 
and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my 
recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had 
taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she 
sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would 
feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at 
last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms- 
giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and 
above all I wished never to see the face again of 
that insidious, good-for-nothinsT, old gray impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- 



Lamb 93 

ficing these tender victims. We read of pigS whipt 
to death with something of a shock, as we hear of 
any other obsolete custom. The age of discipHne 
is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a 
philosophical light merely) what effect this process 
might have tovx^ards intenerating and dulcifying a 
substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh 
of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet 
we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhu- 
manity, how we censure the wisdom of the prac- 
tice. It might impart a gusto. — 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the 
young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and 
maintained with much learning and pleasantry on 
both sides, " Whether, supposing that the flavour of 
a pig who obtained his death by whipping {per 
flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure 
upon the palate of a man more intense than any 
possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is 
man justified in using that method of putting the 
animal to death ? " I forget the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a 
few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and 
brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear 
Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. 
Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep 
them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of 
the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them, 
or make them stronger than they are — but con- 
sider, he is a weakling — a flower. 



94 Best English Essays 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

" A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour 
Xjl. of the game." This was the celebrated zvish 
of old Sarah Battle (now with God), who, next to 
her devotions, loved a good game of whist. She 
was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half- 
and-half players, who have no objection to take a 
hand, if you want one to make up a rubber; who 
affirm that they have no pleasure in winning; that 
they like to win one game and lose another; that 
they can while away an hour very agreeably at a 
card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or 
no; and will desire an adversary, who has slipped 
a wrong card, to take it up and play another. These 
insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One 
of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may 
be said that they do not play at cards, but only play 
at playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She de- 
tested them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and 
would not, save upon a striking emergency, will- 
ingly seat herself at the same table with them. 
She loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined 
enemy. She took, and gave, no concessions. She 
hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever 
passed it over in her adversary without exacting 
the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight: 
cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her 
cards) "like a dancer." She sat bolt upright; and 
neither showed you her cards, nor desired to see 
yours. All people have their blind side — their 



Lamb 95 

superstitions ; and I have heard her declare, under 
the rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit. 

I never in my Hfe — and I knew Sarah Battle 
many of the best years of it — saw her take out her 
snuff-box when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a 
candle in the middle of a game ; or ring for a ser- 
vant, till it was fairly over. She never introduced, 
or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during 
its process. As she emphatically observed, cards 
were cards ; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in 
her fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs 
of a young gentleman of a literary turn, who had 
been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand; and 
who, in his excess of candour, declared, that he 
thought there was no harm in unbending the mind 
now and then, after serious studies, in recreations 
of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble 
occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, 
considered in that light. It was her business, her 
duty, the thing she came into the world to do, — 
and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards — 
over a book. 

Pope was her favourite author : his " Rape of the 
Lock " her favourite work. She once did me the fa- 
vour to play over with me (with the cards) his cele- 
brated game of Ombre in that poem ; and to explain 
to me how far it agreed with, and in what points it 
would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illus- 
trations were apposite and poignant; and I had the 
pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr. 
Bowles; but I suppose they came too late to be 
inserted among his ingenious notes upon that 
author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first 



96 Best English Essays 

love; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. 
The former, she said, was showy and specious, and 
likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty and 
quick shifting of partners — a thing which the con- 
stancy of whist abhors ; the dazzling supremacy and 
regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she justly 
observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where 
his crown and garter give him no proper power 
above his brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy 
vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing 
alone; above all, the overpowering attractions of 
a Sans Prendre Vole, — to the triumph of which 
there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, 
in the contingencies of whist ; — all these, she would 
say, make quadrille a game of captivation to the 
young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider 
game : that was her word. It was a long meal ; not 
like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two 
rubbers might co-extend in duration with an even- 
ing. They gave time to form rooted friendships, 
to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the 
chance-started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating 
alliances of the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, 
she would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral 
embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by 
Machiavel : perpetually changing postures and con- 
nexions ; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to- 
morrow ; kissing and scratching in a breath ; — but 
the wars of whist were comparable to the long, 
steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great 
French and English nations. 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired 
in her favourite game. There was nothing silly in 
it, Hke the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. 



Lamb 97 

No Hushes — that most irrational of all pleas that 
a reasonable being can set up : — that any one should 
claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same 
mark and colour, without reference to the playing of 
the game, or the individual worth or pretensions 
of the cards themselves ! She held this to be a sole- 
cism; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration 
is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and 
looked deeper than the colours of things. — Suits 
were soldiers, she would say, and must have an 
uniformity of array to distinguish them : but what 
should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim 
a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, 
that never were to be marshalled — never to take 
the field ? — She even wished that whist were more 
simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would have 
stripped it of some appendages, which, in the state 
of human frailty, may be venially, and even com- 
mendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the 
deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why 
not one suit always trumps? — Why two colours, 
when the mark of the suit would have sufficiently 
distinguished them without it? 

*' But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably re- 
freshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of 
pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully 
appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, 
where the music and the paintings draw in many 
to worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsensual- 
izing would have kept out. — You yourself have a 
pretty collection of paintings — but confess to me, 
whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, 
among those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul 
Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your bosom 

7 



98 Best English Essays 

glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable 
to that you have it in your power to experience 
most evenings over a well-arranged assortment 
of the court-cards? — the pretty antic habits, like 
heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assuring 
scarlets — the contrasting deadly-killing sables — 
the * hoary majesty of spades ' — Pam in all his 
glory ! — 

" All these might be dispensed with ; and with 
their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the 
game might go on very well, pictureless. But the 
beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever. 
Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they 
must degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a 
dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them on, 
instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to na- 
ture's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants 
to play their gallant jousts and turneys in ! — Ex- 
change those delicately-turned ivory markers — ■ 
(work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their sym- 
bol, — or as profanely slighting their true appli- 
cation as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that 
turned out those little shrines for the goddess) — 
exchange them for little bits of leather (our ances- 
tors' money), or chalk and a slate! " — 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the sound- 
ness of my logic ; and to her approbation of my ar- 
guments on her favourite topic that evening, I have 
always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a 
curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna 
marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter 
Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated), 
brought with him from Florence : — this, and a 
trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her 
death. 



Lamb 99 

The former bequest (which I do not least value), 
I have kept with religious care ; though she herself, 
to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with 
cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I 
have heard her say, — disputing with her uncle, who 
was very partial to it. She could never heartily 
bring her mouth to pronounce "Go " — or " That 's 
a go." She called it an ungrammatical game. The 
pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit 
a rubber (a five-dollar stake) because she would 
not take advantage of the turn-up knave, which 
would have given it her, but which she must have 
claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring " tzvo 
for his heels." There is something extremely gen- 
teel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a 
gentlewoman born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two 
persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of 
the terms — such as pique — repique — the capot 

— they savoured (she thought) of affectation. But 
games for two, or even three, she never greatly 
cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She 
would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the ends are 
gain, with glory. But cards are war, in disguise of 
a sport : when single adversaries encounter, the ends 
proposed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too 
close a fight; with spectators, it is not much bet- 
tered. No looker-on can be interested, except for 
a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money ; he cares 
not for your luck sympathetically, or for your play. 

— Three are still worse; a mere naked war of 
every man against every man, as in cribbage, with- 
out league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and 
contradictory interests, a succession of heartless 



LofC. 



lOO Best English Essays 

leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of 
them,- as in tradrille. — But in square games (she 
meant whist), all that is possible to be attained in 
card-playing is accompHshed. There are the in- 
centives of profit with honour, common to every 
species — though the latter can be but very imper- 
fectly enjoyed in those other games, where the 
spectator is only feebly a participator. But the 
parties in whist are spectators and principals too. 
They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is 
not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and 
an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or in- 
terests beyond its sphere. You glory in some sur- 
prising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold 

— or even an interested — bystander witnesses it, 
but because your partner sympathizes in the contin- 
gency. You win for two. You triumph for two. 
Two are exalted. Two again are mortified ; which 
divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles 
(by taking off the invidiousness) your glories. 
Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to 
one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is 
weakened by multiplying the channels. War be- 
comes a civil game. By such reasonings as these 
the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite 
pastime. 

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to 
play at any game, where chance entered into the 
composition, for nothing. Chance, she would argue 

— and here again, admire the subtlety of her con- 
clusion ; — chance is nothing, but where something 
else depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot be 
glory. What rational cause of exultation could it 
give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times 



Lamb loi 

together by himself? or before spectators, where 
no stake was depending ? — Make a lottery of a 
hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate 
number — and what possible principle of our nature, 
except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain 
that number as many times successively without 
a prize? Therefore she disliked the mixture of 
chance in backgammon, where it was not played for 
money. She called it foolish, and those people 
idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such 
circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little 
to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere 
system of over-reaching. Played for glory, they 
were a mere setting of one man's wit — his 
memory, or combination-faculty rather — against 
another's ; like a mock-engagement at a review, 
bloodless and profitless. She could not conceive a 
game wanting the sprightly infusion of chance, the 
handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people 
playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist 
was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with 
insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut 
similitudes of Castles and Knights, the imagery of 
the board, she would argue, (and I think in this 
case justly) were entirely misplaced and senseless. 
Those hard-head contests can in no instance ally 
with the fancy. They reject form and colour. A 
pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the 
proper arena for such combatants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nur- 
turing the bad passions, she would retort, that man 
is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to 
get the better in something or other : — that this 
passion can scarcely be more safely expended than 



102 Best English Essays 

upon a game at cards : that cards are a temporary 
illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but 
play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle 
shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we 
are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is 
crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream- 
fighting; much ado, great battling, and little blood- 
shed; mighty means for disproportioned ends: 
quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, 
than many of those more serious games of life, 
v/hich men play without esteeming them to be such. 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment 
in these matters, I think I have experienced some 
moments in my life, when playing at cards for noth- 
ing has even been agreeable. When I am in sick- 
ness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for 
the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with 
my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but 
with a tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, — when you 
are subdued and humble, — you are glad to put up 
with an inferior spring of action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, 
as sick zuhist. 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — 
I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives 
not, alas ! to whom I should apologise. 

At such times, those terms which my old friend 
objected to, come in as something admissible. — I 
love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean 
nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. 
Those shadows of winning amuse me. 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I 
capotted her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish 



Lamb 1 03 

I am?) — I wished it might have lasted for ever, 
though we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though 
it was a mere shade of play : I would be content 
to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin 
should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the 
gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was 
doomed to apply after the game was over : and, as 
I do not much relish appHances, there it should ever 
bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing. 



^ POOR RELATIONS 

A POOR relation — is the most irrelevant 
thing in nature, — a piece of impertinent 
correspondency, — an odious approximation, — 
a haunting conscience, — a preposterous shadow, 
lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity, 

— an unwelcome remembrancer, — a perpetually 
recurring mortification, — a drain on your purse, 

— a more intolerable dun upon your pride, — a 
drawback upon success, — a rebuke to your rising, 

— a stain in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutch- 
eon, — a rent in your garment, — a death's head 
at your banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai 
in your gate, — a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in 
your path, — a frog in your chamber, — a fly in 
your ointment, — a mote in your eye, — a triumph 
to your enemy, — an apology to your friends, — the 
one thing not needful, — the hail in harvest, — the 
ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth 
you " That is Mr. ." A rap, between famil- 



I04 Best English Essays 

iarity and respect; that demands, and at the same 
time seems to despair of, entertainment. He en- 
tereth smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth out 
his hand to you to shake, and — draweth it back 
again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time — 
when the table is full. He offereth to go away, 
seeing you have company — but is induced to stay. 
He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children 
are accommodated at a side-table. He never cometh 
upon open days, when your wife says, with some 

complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop 

in to-day." He remembereth birth-days — and pro- 
fesseth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. 
He declareth against fish, the turbot being small — 
yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, 
against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port 
— yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder 
glass of claret, if a strang-er press it upon him. He 
is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being 
too obs;equious, or not civil enough, to him. The 
guests think *' they have seen him before." Every 
one speculateth upon his condition ; and the most 
part take him to be a — tide-waiter. He calleth you 
by your Christian name, to imply that his other is 
the same with your own. He is too familiar by 
half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half 
the familiarity, he might pass for a casual depend- 
ent ; with more boldness, he would be in no danger 
of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for 
a friend; yet taketh on him more state than befits 
a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, 
inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — yet 't is odds, 
from his garb and demeanour, that your guests take 
him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist 



Lamb 105 

table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and — re- 
sents being left out. When the company break up, 
he proffereth to go for a coach — and lets the ser- 
vant go. He recollects your grandfather ; and will 
thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anec- 
dote — of the family. He knew it when it was not 
quite so flourishing as " he is blest in seeing it now." 
He reviveth past situations, to institute what he 
calleth — favourable comparisons. With a reflecting 
sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of 
your furniture : and insults you with a special com- 
mendation of your window-curtains. He is of 
opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape ; but, 
after all, there was something more comfortable 
about the old tea-kettle — which you must remem- 
ber. He dare say you must find a great convenience 
in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to 
your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had 
your arms done on vellum yet; and did not know, 
till lately, that such-and-such had been the crest of 
the family. His memory is unseasonable ; his com- 
pliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his stay per- 
tinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss 
his chair into a corner as precipitately as possible, 
and feel fairly rid of two nuisances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is 
— a female Poor Relation. You may do something 
with the other; you may pass him off tolerably 
well ; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. 
" He is an old humorist," you may say, '' and affects 
to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than 
folks would take them to be. You are fond of 
having a Character at your table, and truly he is 
one." But in the indications of female poverty 



io6 Best English Essays 

there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below 
herself from caprice. The truth must out without 

shuffling. *' She is plainly related to the L 's ; 

or what does she at their house ? " She is, in all 
probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of 
ten, at least, this is the case. — Her garb is some- 
thing between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the 
former evidently predominates. She is most pro- 
vokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to 
her inferiority. He may require to be repressed 
sometimes — aliquando sufflaminandiis erat — but 
there is no raising her. You send her soup at din- 
ner, and she begs to be helped — after the gentle- 
men. Mr. requests the honour of taking wine 

with her ; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, 
and chooses the former — because he does. She 
calls the servant Sir; and insists on not troubling 
him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronises 
her. The children's governess takes upon her to 
conrect her, when she has mistaken the piano for a 
harpsichord. 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable 
instance of the disadvantages to which this chimer- 
ical notion of affinity constituting a claim to ac- 
quaintance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. 
A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and 
a lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually 
crossed by the malignant maternity of an old woman, 
who persists in calling him *' her son Dick." But 
she has wherewithal in the end to recompense his 
indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant 
surface, under which it had been her seeming busi- 
ness and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, 
besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an 



Lamb 107 

Amlet In real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, 

sank indeed. Poor W was of my own standing 

at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of promise. 
If he had a blemish, it was too much pride ; but its 
quality was inoffensive; it was not of that sort 
which hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors 
at a distance ; it only sought to ward off deroga- 
tion from itself. It was the principle of self-respect 
carried as far as it could go, without infringing 
upon that respect, which he would have every one 
else equally maintain for himself. He would have 
you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a 
quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather 
older boys, and our tallness made us more obnox- 
ious to observation in the blue clothes, because I 
would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the 
town with him to elude notice, when we have been 
out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneer- 
ing and prying metropolis. W went, sore with 

these notions, to Oxford, where the dignity and 
sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy 
of a humble introduction, wrought in him a passion- 
ate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion 
from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than 
his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. 
He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under 
which Latimer must have walked erect, and in 
which Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted 
in a vein of no discommendable vanity. In the 
depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, 
the poor student shrunk from observation. He 
found shelter among books, which insult not ; and 
studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances. 
He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for 



io8 Best English Essays 

looking out beyond his domains. The healing in- 
fluence of studious pursuits was upon him to soothe 
and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man, 
when the waywardness of his fate broke out against 
him with a second and worse malignity. The father 
of W had hitherto exercised the humble pro- 
fession of house-painter, at N , near Oxford. 

A supposed interest with some of the heads of col- 
leges had now induced him to take up his abode in 
that city, with the hope of being employed upon 
some public works which were talked of. From that 
moment I read in the countenance of the young man 
the determination which at length tore him from 
academical pursuits for ever. To a person unac- 
quainted with our universities, the distance between 
the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called 
— the trading part of the latter especially — is car- 
ried to an excess that would appear harsh and in- 
credible. The temperament of W 's father was 

diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W 

was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with 
his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and 
scraping, cap in hand, to anything that wore the 
semblance of a gown — insensible to the winks and 
opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose 
chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he 
was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking. 

Such a state of things could not last. W must 

change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. He 
chose the former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who 
strains the point of the filial duties as high as they 
can bear, censure the dereliction ; he cannot esti- 
mate the struggle. I stood with W , the last 

afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his 



Lamb 109 

paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading 
from the High Street to the back of col- 
lege, where W kept his rooms. He seemed 

thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally 
him — finding him in a better mood — upon a rep- 
resentation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old 
man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had 
caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over 
his really handsome shop, either as a token of pros- 
perity or badge of gratitude to his saint. W 

looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, " knew his 
mounted sign — and fled." A letter on his father's 
table, the next morning, announced that he had 
accepted a commission in a regiment about to em- 
bark for Portugal. He was among the first who 
perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began 
with treating half seriously, I should have fallen 
upon a recital so eminently painful ; but this theme 
of poor relationship is replete with so much matter 
for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is 
difficult to keep the account distinct without blend- 
ing. The earliest impressions which I received on 
this matter are certainly not attended with anything 
painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At 
my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be 
found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an 
aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet 
comely appearance. His deportment was of the 
essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I 
was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little 
inclination to have done so — for my cue was to 
admire in silence. A particular elbow-chair was 
appropriated to him, which was in no case to be 



no Best English Essays 

violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which 
appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the 
days of his coming. I used to think him a prodi- 
giously rich man. All I could make out of him was, 
that he and my father had been schoolfellows, a 
world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came from the 
Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all 
the money was coined — and I thought he was the 
owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower 
twined themselves about his presence. He seemed 
above human infirmities and passions. A sort of 
melancholy grandeur invested him. From some 
inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about 
in an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive — a stately 
being let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often 
have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, 
in spite of an habitual general respect which we all 
in common manifested towards him, would venture 
now and then to stand up against him in some argu- 
ment touching their youthful days. The houses of 
the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of 
my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill 
and in the valley. This marked distinction formed 
an obvious division between the boys who lived 
above (however brought together in a common 
school) and the boys whose paternal residence was 
on the plain ; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code 
of these )^oung Grotiuses. My father had been a 
leading Mountaineer; and would still maintain the 
general superiority in skill and hardihood of the 
Above Boys (his own faction) over the Belozv Boys 
(so were they called), of which party his contem- 
porary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were 
the skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon 



Lamb i i i 

which the old gentleman was ever brought out — 
and bad blood bred ; even sometimes almost to the 
recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostili- 
ties. But my father, who scorned to insist upon 
advantages, generally contrived to turn the conver- 
sation upon some adroit by-commendation of the 
old Minster; in the general preference of which, 
before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller 
on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a 
conciliating level, and lay down their less important 
differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman 
really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the 
thought that came over me : " Perhaps he will never 
come here again." He had been pressed to take 
another plate of the viand, which I have already 
mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his 
visits. He had refused with a resistance amounting 
to rigor, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who 
had something of this, in common with my cousin 
Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility 
out of season — uttered the following memorable 
application — " Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, 
for you do not get pudding every day." The old 
gentleman said nothing at the time — but he took 
occasion in the course of the evening, when some 
argument had intervened between them, to utter 
with an emphasis which chilled the company, and 
which chills me now as I write it — " Woman, you 
are superannuated ! " John Billet did not survive 
long, after the digesting of this affront ; but he 
survived long enough to assure me that peace was 
actually restored! and if I remember aright, an- 
other pudding was discreetly substituted in the place 
of that which had occasioned the offence. He died 



112 Best English Essays 

at the Mint (anno 1781) where he had long held, 
what he accounted, a comfortable independence; 
and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a 
penny, which were found in his escritoir after his 
decease, left the world, blessing God that he had 
enough to bury him, and that he had never been 
obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was — 
a Poor Relation. 



V 



DE Q^UINCEY 



DE QUINCEY: 

INVENTOR OP^ MODERN "IMPAS- 
SIONED PROSE" 

PICTURE to yourself a shy little man, with 
bright, roving eyes, thin features, and 
many of the physical characteristics of 
the scholar; give this man a luxuriant imagina- 
tion, and a nervous organization that seems to 
require such a stimulant as opium in excessive 
quantities, make him a v\^riter, — and you have 
De Quincey. In every sense of the v^ord he 
v^as a thorough scholar, as v^itness the Latin and 
Greek quotations scattered through his writings 
and seeming an inevitable and natural part of his 
thinking; a brilliant conversationist, as we may 
gather from the sparkling humor and sly wit that 
make their way into nearly all his work; and, 
strangely enough, at the same time a dreamer, 
though in De Quincey we find dreams associated 
with scholarly accuracy and a remarkable power 
of subtle analysis. Like Lewis Carroll, he had all 
the shyness of the scholar. He therefore takes 
refuge in the anonymity of essay-writing, where 
he may indulge his brilliant conversational power 
with the utmost freedom. De Quincey' s essays 
are therefore delightfully conversational, though 
they are the product of the solitary imagination. 



ii6 Best English Essays 

As De Quincey through a somewhat long Hfe 
gained his Hving by his pen, his collected works 
are extremely miscellaneous in character. He 
was an excellent critic, a sympathetic biographical 
writer, a successful producer of such amusing 
literary curiosities as his essay '' On Murder Con- 
sidered as a Fine Art." But his first success, and 
the work by which he is best known, is his *' Con- 
fessions of an English Opium-Eater," in which, 
in his description of his opium dreams, he gives 
us the first examples of what he calls " impas- 
sioned prose." Possibly the words " highly im- 
aginative prose " would describe it better. It was 
distinctly prose and not poetry, since the writer 
never cuts loose entirely from ground facts; but 
it exhibits capabilities of prose that had never 
before been suspected. This " impassioned 
prose " De Quincey seemed always to consider 
his most valuable contribution to literature, and 
later in life he continued the '' Confessions " in 
a sort of sequel on which he expended his most 
loving care. The plan of this sequel was never 
fully carried out ; but we have the " Suspiria de 
Profundis" and ''The English Mail Coach"; 
the former of which contains the finest specimen 
of all his work, according to Professor Masson 
("Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow"), the 
latter his most extreme example of lyrical prose, 
namely, the " Dream-Fugue " forming Part III. 
In this De Quincey attempts nothing less than the 
reproduction of the effect of solemn and lofty 



De Quincey 117 

music by mere imaginative description; and in 
that attempt many critics think that De Quincey 
was not wholly successful; but it is interesting 
to note how Richard Wagner, against prolonged 
critical hostility, carried to success in actual music 
the imaginative method De Quincey here uses in 
language description. 

While the " Dream- Fugue " may be considered 
a pure opium dream, still we should lose the point 
and meaning of it if we failed to note how every 
lyrical image in this part of the composition cor- 
responds to a prose fact in the first and second 
parts. The logical relationship is perfect, and is 
elaborated with the utmost thought and care. 
Success is attained by self-restraint ; it is freedom 
through self-mastery and obedience to the ever- 
lasting laws of thought and emotion and uni- 
versal truth. This is lyrical writing that attains 
its success in mature life, not in youth as lyrical 
poetry does, and not only genius but time is 
required for its perfection. 

De Quincey's ordinary style, seen to admirable 
advantage in the first parts of *' The English 
Mail Coach," is graceful and sinuous in the ex- 
treme, winding in and out through a complicated 
labyrinth, yet without ever losing the clue of the 
thought, or becoming for a moment obscure, or 
being betrayed into the slightest awkwardness; 
and when we come to the " Dream-Fugue " we 
think of the musician passionately devoted to his 
musical art who steals into the organ loft Vvdien he 



ii8 Best English Essays 

knows that but one or two chance devotees are 
hstening in the empty cathedral, and pours forth 
his most triumphant chords. " Levana and Our 
Ladies of Sorrow " is in a more subdued and 
subtle key, more delicately artistic, more perfect ; 
yet we could hardly understand it on a first read- 
ing were we not prepared for it by the more 
obvious '' Mail Coach." 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

IN the Preface to the volume of his collected 
works containing '' The English Mail Coach," 
De Ouincey gave a brief explanation of his design. 
After summarizing the facts given at length in the 
second section, entitled " The Vision of Sudden 
Death," he goes on as follows : ** But a movement 
of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from the dread- 
ful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, 
raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very 
soon into a rolling succession of di*eams. The actual 
scene, as looked down upon from the box of the 
mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous 
and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled 
dream is circumstantially reported in Section the 
Third, entitled ' Dream-Fugue on the Theme of 
Sudden Death.' " 

The first section — *' The Glory of Motion " — 
was a general discursive essay on the English mail 
coach and the pleasures and observations incident 
to riding upon the top of it. It formed nearly half 
of the whole work. Of this De Quincey says : 



De Quincey 119 

*' What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail, 
— the scenical strife of action and passion, of 
anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them 
moving in ghostly silence, — this duel between life 
and death narrowing itself to a point of such ex- 
quisite evanescence as the collision neared: all 
these elements of the scene blended, under the law 
of association, with the previous and permanent 
features of distinction investing the mail itself; 
which features at that time lay — first, in velocity 
unprecedented; secondly, in the power and beauty 
of the horses ; thirdly, in the official connection 
with the government of a great nation; and, 
fourthly, in the function, almost a consecrated func- 
tion, of publishing and diffusing through the land 
the great political events, and especially the great 
battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. 
These honorary distinctions are all described cir- 
cumstantially in the first or introductory section — 
* The Glory of Motion.' The three first were dis- 
tinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth 
and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with 
Napoleon ; and this it was which most naturally 
introduced Waterloo into the dream. ... So far 
as I know, every element in the shifting movements 
of the Dream derived itself either primarily from 
the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary 
features associated with the mail. For example, the 
cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic com- 
bination of features which grouped themselves 
together at the point of collision — namely, an 
arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards 
long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty 
trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's 



I20 Best English Essays 

horn, again — a humble instrument in itself — was 
yet glorified as the organ of publication for so many- 
great national events. And the incident of the 
Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas- 
relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble 
lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, 
was doubtless secretly suggested by my own imper- 
fect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow 
a warning blast. But the Dream knows best ; and 
the Dream, I say again, is the responsible party." 
In addition to the items mentioned by De Quincey 
as especially influencing his Dream, two specific 
instances of observations described in " The Glory 
of Motion " are worked into the Dream, and are 
here reprinted complete. 



Section I — The Glory of Motion 



How else, for example, than as a constant 
watcher for the dawn, and for the London mail 
that in summer months entered about daybreak 
amongst the lawny thickets of Marlborough forest, 
couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath road, have 
become the glorified inmate of my dreams? Yet 
Fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and 
person that perhaps in my whole life I have beheld, 
merited the station which even now, from a distance 
of forty years, she holds in my dreams ; yes, though 
by links of natural association she brings along with 
her a troop of dreadful creatures, fabulous and not 
fabulous, that are more abominable to the heart 
than Fanny and the dawn are delightful. 



De Quincey 121 

Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, 
lived at a mile's distance from that road, but came 
so continually to meet the mail that I on my fre- 
quent transits rarely missed her, and naturally con- 
nected her image with the great thoroughfare where 
only I had ever seen her. Why she came so punctu- 
ally I do not exactly know ; but I believe with some 
burden of commissions, to be executed in Bath, 
which had gathered to her own residence as a cen- 
tral rendezvous for converging them. The mail- 
coachman who drove the Bath mail and wore the 
royal livery happened to be Fanny's grandfather. 
A good man he was, that loved his beautiful grand- 
daughter, and, loving her wisely, was vigilant over 
her deportment in any case where young Oxford 
might happen to be concerned. Did my vanity 
then suggest that I myself, individually, could fall 
within the line of his terrors? Certainly not, as 
regarded any physical pretensions that I could 
plead; for Fanny (as a chance passenger from her 
own neighbourhood once told me) counted in her 
train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, 
if not open aspirants to her favour ; and probably not 
one of the whole brigade but excelled myself in per- 
sonal advantages: Ulysses even, with the unfair 
advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have 
undertaken that amount of suitors. So the danger 
might have seemed slight — only that woman is 
universally aristocratic; it is amongst her nobilities 
of heart that she is so. Now, the aristocratic dis- 
tinctions in my favour might easily with Miss 
Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies. 
Did I then make love to Fanny ? Why, yes ; about 
as much love as one could make whilst the mail was 



122 Best English Essays 

changing horses — a process which, ten years later, 
did not occupy above eighty seconds ; but then, — 
viz. about Waterloo — it occupied five times eighty. 
Now, four hundred seconds offer a field quite ample 
enough for whispering into a young woman's ear a 
great deal of truth, and (by way of parenthesis) 
some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, 
therefore, to watch me. And yet, as happens too 
often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with 
the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would 
he have watched me had I meditated any evil whis- 
pers to Fanny ! She, it is my belief, would have 
protected herself against any man's evil suggestions. 
But he, as the result showed, could not have inter- 
cepted the opportunities for such suggestions. Yet, 
why not ? Was he not active ? Was he not bloom- 
ing? Blooming he was as Fanny herself. 

"Say, all our praises why should lords " 

Stop, that 's not the line. 

" Say, all our roses why should girls engross ? " 

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face 
deeper even than his granddaughter's — his being 
drawn from the ale-cask, Fanny's from the foun- 
tains of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming 
face, some infirmities he had; and one particularly 
in which he too much resembled a crocodile. This 
lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. 
The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to 
the absurd length of his back ; but in our grandpapa 
it arose rather from the absurd breadth of his back, 
combined, possibly, with some growing stiffness in 



De Quincey 123 

his legs. Now, upon this crocodile infirmity of his 
I planted a human advantage for tendering my 
homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his hon- 
ourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us 
his mighty Jovian back (what a field for displaying 
to mankind his royal scarlet!), whilst inspecting 
professionally the buckles, the straps, and the silvery 
turrets of his harness, than I raised Miss Fanny's 
hand to my lips, and, by the mixed tenderness and 
respectfulness of my manner, caused her easily to 
understand how happy it would make me to rank 
upon her list as No. 10 or 12 : in which case a few 
casualties amongst her lovers (and, observe, they 
hanged liberally in those days) might have pro- 
moted me speedily to the top of the tree ; as, on the 
other hand, with how much loyalty of submission 
I acquiesced by anticipation in her award, supposing 
that she should plant me in the very rearward of 
her favor, as No. 199 -f- 1. Most truly I loved this 
beautiful and ingenuous girl; and, had it not been 
for the Bath mail, timing all courtships by post- 
office allowance, heaven only knows what might 
have come of it. People talk of being over head 
and ears in love ; now, the mail was the cause that 
I sank only over ears in love, — which, you know, 
still left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole con- 
duct of the affair. 

Ah, reader! when I look back upon those days, 
it seems to me that all things change — all things 
perish. " Perish the roses and the palms of kings " : 
perish even the crowns and trophies of Waterloo: 
thunder and lightning are not the thunder and 
lightning v/hich I remember. Roses are degenerat- 
ing. The Fannies of our island — though this I say 



124 -^^st English Essays 

with reluctance — are not visibly improving; and 
the Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Croc- 
odiles, you will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton 
tells me that the crocodile does not change, — that 
a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for 
riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. 
That may be; but the reason is that the crocodile 
does not live fast — he is a slow coach. I believe it 
is generally understood among naturalists that the 
crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression 
that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. Now, as 
the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over 
Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular mis- 
take that prevailed through innumerable genera- 
tions on the Nile. The crocodile made the ridiculous 
blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for 
his own eating. Man, taking a different view of the 
subject, naturally met that mistake by another: he 
viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to wor- 
ship, but always to run away from. And this 
continued till Mr. Waterton changed the relations 
between the animals. The mode of escaping from 
the reptile he showed to be not by running away, but 
by leaping on its back booted and spurred. The 
two animals had misunderstood each other. The use 
of the crocodile has now been cleared up — viz. to be 
ridden; and the final cause of man is that he may 
improve the health of the crocodile by riding him 
a-foxhunting before breakfast. And it is pretty 
certain that any crocodile who has been regularly 
hunted through the season, and is master of the 
weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate now as 
well as ever he w^ould have done in the infancy of 
the pyramids. 



De Quincey 125 

If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all 
things else undeniably do: even the shadow of the 
pyramids grows less. And often the restoration in 
vision of Fanny and the Bath road makes me too 
pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the dark- 
ness, if I happen to call back the image of Fanny, 
up rises suddenly from a gulf of forty years a rose 
in June; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in 
June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny. One 
after the other, like the antiphonies in the choral 
service, rise Fanny and the rose in June, then 
back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then come 
both together, as in a chorus — roses and Fannies, 
Fannies and roses, without end, thick as blossoms 
in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in 
a royal livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen 
capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand 
from the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we 
upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculp- 
tured with the hours, that mingle with the heavens 
and the heavenly host. Then all at once we are 
arrived at Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely 
households of the roe-deer ; the deer and their 
fawns retire into the dewy thickets ; the thickets are 
rich with roses; once again the roses call up the 
sweet countenance of Fanny ; and she, being the 
granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful 
host of semi-legendary animals — griffins, dragons, 
basilisks, sphinxes — till at length the whole vision 
of fighting images crowds into one towering ar- 
morial shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities 
and human loveliness that have perished, but quar- 
tered heraldically with unutterable and demoniac 
natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest. 



126 Best English Essays 

one fair female hand, with the forefinger pointing, 
in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, 
where is sculptured the eternal writing which pro- 
claims the frailty of earth and her children. 

GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY 

But the grandest chapter of our experience within 
the whole mail-coach service was on those occasions 
when we went down from London with the news 
of victory. . . . The night before us is a night of 
victory; and, behold! to the ordinary display what 
a heart-shaking addition ! — horses, men, carriages, 
all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves 
and ribbons. . . . One heart, one pride, one glory, 
connects every man by the transcendent bond of his 
national blood. The spectators, who are numerous 
beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these 
fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. . . . Horses ! 
can these be horses, that bound off with the action 
and gestures of leopards ? What stir ! — what sea- 
like ferment ! — what a thundering of wheels ! — 
what trampling of hoofs ! — what a sounding of 
trumpets ! — what farewell cheers — what redou- 
bling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting 
the name of the particular mail — " Liverpool for 
ever!" — with the name of the particular vic- 
tory — *' Badajoz for ever ! " or " Salamanca for 
ever!" 

The people they met were variously affected. 
Some thought only of the joy of victory ; some were 
overwhelmed with sadness to think what ill fate 
might have overtaken their own sons and brothers 
in the ranks. 



De Quincey 127 

Every joy, however, even rapturous joy — such is 
the sad law of earth — may carry with it grief, or 
fear of grief, to some. Three miles beyond Barnet, 
we see approaching us another private carriage, 
nearly repeating the circumstances of the former 
case. Here, also, the glasses are all down; here, 
also, is an elderly lady seated ; but the two daughters 
are missing ; for the single young person sitting by 
the lady's side seems to be an attendant — so I judge 
from her dress, and her air of respectful reserve. 
The lady is in mourning; and her countenance 
expresses sorrow. At first she does not look up; 
so that I believe she is not aware of our approach, 
until she hears the measured beating of our horses' 
hoofs. Then she raises her eyes to settle them pain- 
fully on our triumphal equipage. Our decorations 
explain the case to her at once; but she beholds 
them with apparent anxiety, or even with terror. 
Some time before this, I, finding it difficult to hit 
a flying mark when embarrassed by the coachman's 
person and reins intervening, had given to the guard 
a '' Courier " evening paper, containing the gazette, 
for the next carriage that might pass. Accordingly 
he tossed it in, so folded that the huge capitals ex- 
pressing some such legend as glorious victory 
might catch the eye at once. To see the paper, how- 
ever, at all, interpreted as it was by our ensigns of 
triumph, explained everything; and, if the guard 
were right in thinking the lady to have received it 
with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful 
that she had suffered some deep personal affliction 
in connection with this Spanish war. 

Here, now, was the case of one who, having for- 
merly suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be dis- 



128 Best English Essays 

tressing herself with anticipations of another similar 
suffering. That same night, and hardly three hours 
later, occurred the reverse case. A poor woman, 
who too probably would find herself, in a day or two, 
to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the 
battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exul- 
tation so unmeasured in the news and its details as 
gave to her the appearance which amongst Celtic 
Highlanders is called fey.^ This was at some little 
town where we changed horses an hour or two after 
midnight. Some fair or wake had kept the people 
up out of their beds, and had occasioned a partial 
illumination of the stalls and booths, presenting an 
unusual but very impressive effect. We saw many 
lights moving about as we drew near ; and perhaps 
the most striking scene on the whole route was our 
reception at this place. The flashing of torches and 
the beautiful radiance of blue lights (technically, 
Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses; the 
fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumina- 
tion falling upon our flowers and glittering laurels ; 
whilst all around ourselves, that formed a centre of 
light, the darkness gathered on the rear and flanks 
in massy blackness : these optical splendors, to- 
gether with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people, 
composed a picture at once scenical and affecting, 
theatrical and holy. As we stayed for three or four 
minutes, I alighted; and immediately from a dis- 
mantled stall in the street, where no doubt she had 
been presiding through the earlier part of the night, 
advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The sight 
of my newspaper it was that had drawn her atten- 
tion upon myself. The victory which we were 
1 Fey, fated, doomed to die. 



De Quincey 129 

carrying down to the provinces on this occasion was 
the imperfect one of Talavera — imperfect for its 
results, such was the virtual treachery of the Span- 
ish general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever- 
memorable heroism. I told her the main outline of 
the battle. The agitation of her enthusiasm had 
been so conspicuous when listening, and when first 
applying for information, that I could not but ask 
her if she had not some relative in the Peninsular 
army. Oh, yes; her only son was there. In what 
regiment? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. 
My heart sank within me as she made that answer. 
This sublime regiment, which an Englishman should 
never mention without raising his hat to their 
memory, had made the most memorable and effec- 
tive charge recorded in military annals. They 
leaped their horses — over a trench where they 
could; into it, and with the result of death or mu- 
tilation, when they could not. What proportion 
cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those w^ho 
did closed up and went down upon the enemy with 
such divinity of fervour (I use the word divinity by 
design : the inspiration of God must have prompted 
this movement to those whom even then He was 
calling to His presence) that two results followed. 
As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I 
believe, originally three hundred and fifty strong, 
paralysed a French column six thousand strong, 
then ascended the hill, and fixed the gaze of the 
whole French army. As regarded themselves, the 
23d were supposed at first to have been barely not 
annihilated ; but eventually, I believe, about one in 
four survived. And this, then, was the regiment — 
a regiment already for some hours glorified and 

9 



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hallowed to the ear of all London, as lying stretched, 
by a large majority, upon one bloody aceldama — 
in which the young trooper served whose mother 
was now talking in a spirit of such joyous enthusi- 
asm. Did I tell her the truth ? Had I the heart to 
break up her dreams? No. To-morrow, said I to 
myself — to-morrow, or the next day, will publish 
the worst. For one night more wherefore should 
she not sleep in peace ? After to-morrow the chances 
are too many that peace will forsake her pillow. 
This brief respite, then, let her owe to my gift and 
my forbearance. But, if I told her not of the bloody 
price that had been paid, not therefore was I silent 
on the contributions from her son's regiment to that 
day's service and glory. I showed her not the fu- 
neral banners under which the noble regiment was 
sleeping. I lifted not the overshadowing laurels 
from the bloody trench in which horse and rider 
lay mangled together. But I told her how these 
dear children of England, officers and privates, had 
leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily as 
hunters to the morning's chase. I told her how they 
rode their horses into the mists of death, — saying 
to myself, but not saying to her, '' and laid down 
their young lives for thee, O mother England! as 
willingly — poured out their noble blood as cheer- 
fully — as ever, after a long day's sport, when in- 
fants, they had rested their wearied heads upon their 
mother's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms." 
Strange it is, yet true, that she seemed to have no 
fears for her son's safety, even after this knowledge 
that the 23d Dragoons had been memorably en- 
gaged; but so much was she enraptured by the 
knowledge that his regiment, and therefore that he, 



De Quincey 131 

had rendered conspicuous service in the dreadful 
conflict — a service which had actually made them, 
within the last twelve hours, the foremost topic of 
conversation in London — so absolutely was fear 
swallowed up in joy — that, in the mere simplicity 
of her fervent nature, the poor woman threw her 
arms round my^neck, as she thought of her son, and 
gave to me the kiss which secretly was meant for 
him. 

Section II — The Vision of Sudden Death 

What is to be taken as the predominant opinion 
of man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden 
DEATH ? It is remarkable that, in different condi- 
tions of society, sudden death has been variously 
regarded as the consummation of an earthly career 
most fervently to be desired, or, again, as that con- 
summation which is with most horror to be depre- 
cated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner-party 
{coena), on the very evening before his assassina- 
tion, when the minutes of his earthly career were 
numbered, being asked what death, in his judgment, 
might be pronounced the most eligible, replied 
" That which should be most sudden." On the other 
hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, 
when breathing forth supplications, as if in some 
representative character, for the whole human race 
prostrate before God, places such a death in the very 
van of horrors : " From lightning and tempest ; 
from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle 
and murder, and from sudden death — Good Lord, 
deliver us.'' Sudden death is here made to crown 
the climax in a grand ascent of calamities ; it is 



132 Best English Essays 

ranked among the last of curses; and yet by the 
noblest of Romans it was ranked as the first of 
blessings. In that difference most readers will see 
little more than the essential difference between 
Christianity and Paganism. But this, on consider- 
ation, I doubt. The Christian Church may be right 
in its estimate of sudden death; and it is a natural 
feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm 
one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that 
which seems most reconcilable with meditation, with 
penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of 
farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur to 
me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest 
petition of the English Litany, unless under a 
special construction of the word " sudden." It 
seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to 
human infirmity than exacted from human piety. 
It is not so much a doctrine built upon the eternities 
of the Christian system as a plausible opinion built 
upon special varieties of physical temperament. Let 
that, however, be as it may, two remarks suggest 
themselves as prudent restraints upon a doctrine 
which else may wander, and has wandered, into an 
uncharitable superstition. The first is this: that 
many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of 
a sudden death from the disposition to lay a false 
stress upon words or acts simply because by an acci- 
dent they have become :final words or acts. If a 
man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when 
he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely 
regarded with peculiar horror ; as though the in- 
toxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. 
But that is unphilosophic. The man was, or he was 
not, habitually a drunkard. If not, if his intoxi- 



De Quincey 133 

cation were a solitary accident, there can be no 
reason for allowing special emphasis to this act 
simply because through misfortune it became his 
final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were no 
accident, but one of his habitual transgressions, will 
it be the more habitual or the more a transgression 
because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has 
caused this habitual transgression to be also a final 
one. Could the man have had any reason even dimly 
to foresee his own sudden death, there would have 
been a new feature in his act of intemperance — a 
feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one 
that, having known himself drawing near to the 
presence of God, should have suited his demeanour 
to an expectation so awful. But this is no part of 
the case supposed. And the only new element in 
the man's act is not any element of special immor- 
ality, but simply of special misfortune. 

The other remark has reference to the meaning of 
the word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the 
Christian Church do not differ in the way supposed, 
— that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine 
as between Pagan and Christian views of the moral 
temper appropriate to death; but perhaps they are 
contemplatirg dififerent cases. Both contemplate a 
violent death, a BiaOavaroq — death that is yStato?, 
or, in other words, death that is brought about, not 
by internal and spontaneous change, but by active 
force having its origin from without.^ In this mean- 
ing the two authorities agree. Thus far they are in 
harmony. But the difference is that the Roman by 
the word " sudden " means unlingering, whereas 

1 Biaios, Greek for " forcible " or " violent " : hence Biathana- 
tos, violent death. 



134 Best English Essays 

the Christian Litany by " sudden death " means a 
death zvithottt wai'ning, consequently without any 
available summons to religious preparation. The 
poor mutineer who kneels down to gather into his 
heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying 
comrades dies by a most sudden death in Caesar's 
sense; one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly 
not one) groan, and all is over. But, in the sense 
of the Litany, the mutineer's death is far from sud- 
den : his offence originally, his imprisonment, his 
trial, the interval between his sentence and its 
execution, having all furnished him with separate 
warnings of his fate — having all summoned him 
to meet it with solemn preparation. 

Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we 
comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a 
holy Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor 
departing children that God would vouchsafe to 
them the last great privilege and distinction possible 
on a death-bed, viz. the opportunity of untroubled 
preparation for facing this mighty trial. Sudden 
death, as a mere variety in the modes of dying where 
death in some shape is inevitable, proposes a ques- 
tion of choice which, equally in the Roman and 
the Christian sense, will be variously answered ac- 
cording to each man's variety of temperament. 
Meantime, one aspect of sudden death there is, one 
modification, upon which no doubt can arise, that of 
all martyrdoms it is the most agitating — viz. where 
it surprises a man under circumstances which offer 
(or which seem to offer) some hurrying, flying, 
inappreciably minute chance of evading it. Sudden 
as the danger which it affronts must be any effort 
by which such an evasion can be accomplished. 



De Quincey 135 

Even that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying 
in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be 
vain, — even that anguish is liable to a hideous ex- 
asperation in one particular case: viz. where the 
appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self- 
preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of 
some other life besides your own, accidentally 
thrown upon your protection. To fail, to collapse 
in a service merely your own, might seem compara- 
tively venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial. 
But to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly 
thrown into your hands the final interests of another, 
— a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates 
of life and death : this, to a man of apprehensive 
conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious 
criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. 
You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly 
to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any 
even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your 
energies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer. 
You had but the twinkling of an eye for your effort, 
and that effort might have been unavailing; but to 
have risen to the level of such an effort would have 
rescued you, though not from dying, yet from dying 
as a traitor to your final and farewell duty. 

The situation here contemplated exposes a dread- 
ful ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of human 
nature. It is not that men generally are summoned 
to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in 
shadowy outline, such a trial is moving subterrane- 
ously in perhaps all men's natures. Upon the secret 
mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, 
perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so fa- 
miliar to childhood, of meeting a lion, and, through 



136 Best English Essays 

languishing prostration in hope and the energies of 
hope, that constant sequel of lying down before the 
lion, publishes the secret frailty of human nature — 
reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself — records 
its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us es- 
capes that dream; perhaps, as by some sorrowful 
doom of man, that dream repeats for every one of 
us, through every generation, the original tempta- 
tion in Eden. Every one of us, in this dream, has a 
bait offered to the infirm places of his own individ- 
ual will ; once again a snare is presented for tempt- 
ing him into captivity to a luxury of ruin; once 
again, as in aboriginal Paradise, the man falls by 
his own choice; again, by infinite iteration, the 
ancient earth groans to Heaven, through her secret 
caves, over the weakness of her child. '' Nature, 
from her seat, sighing through all her works," again 
" gives signs of woe that all is lost " ; and again the 
counter-sigh is repeated to the sorrowing heavens 
for the endless rebellion against God. It is not 
without probability that in the world of dreams 
every one of us ratifies for himself the original 
transgression. In dreams, perhaps under some 
secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to 
the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the 
memory as soon as all is finished, each several child 
of our mysterious race completes for himself the 
treason of the aboriginal fall. 

The incident, so memorable in itself by its features 
of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the 
eye, which furnished the text for this reverie upon 
Sudden Death, occurred to myself in the dead of 
night, as a solitary spectator, when seated on the 



De Quincey 137 

box of the Manchester and Glasgow mail, in the 
second or third summer after Waterloo. I find it 
necessary to relate the circumstances, because they 
are such as could not have occurred unless under a 
singular combination of accidents. In those days, 
the oblique and lateral communications with many 
rural post-offices were so arranged, either through 
necessity or through defect of system, as to make 
it requisite for the main north-western mail {i. e. 
the dozmi mail) on reaching Manchester to halt for 
a number of hours ; how many, I do not remember ; 
six or seven, I think ; but the result was that, in the 
ordinary course, the mail recommenced its journey 
northwards about midnight. Wearied with the long 
detention at a gloomy hotel, I walked out about 
eleven o'clock at night for the sake of fresh air; 
meaning to fall in with the mail and resume my seat 
at the post-office. The night, however, being yet 
dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the streets 
being at that hour empty, so as to offer no oppor- 
tunities for asking the road, I lost my way, and did 
not reach the post-office until it was considerably 
past midnight; but, to my great relief (as it was 
important for me to be in Westmorland by the morn- 
ing), I saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail, 
blazing through the gloom, an evidence that my 
chance was not yet lost. Past the time it was ; but, 
by some rare accident, the mail was not even yet 
ready to start. I ascended to my seat on the box, 
where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the 
Bridgewater Arms. I had left it there in imitation 
of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting 
on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off 
the ground the whole human race, and notifying to 



138 Best English Essays 

the Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best 
compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket-hand- 
kerchief once and for ever upon that virgin soil: 
thenceforward claiming the jus dominii to the top 
of the atmosphere above it, and also the right of 
driving shafts to the centre of the earth below it; 
so that all people found after this warning either 
aloft in upper chambers of the atmosphere, or grop- 
ing in subterraneous shafts, or squatting auda- 
ciously on the surface of the soil, will be treated as 
trespassers — kicked, that is to say, or decapitated, 
as circumstances may suggest, by their very faithful 
servant, the owner of the said pocket-handkerchief. 
In the present case, it is probable that my cloak 
might not have been respected, and the jus gentium 
might have been cruelly violated in my person — 
for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, 
gas being a great ally of morality ; but it so hap- 
pened that on this night there was no other outside 
passenger; and thus the crime, which else was but 
too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. 

Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity 
of laudanum, having already travelled two hundred 
and fifty miles — viz. from a point seventy miles 
beyond London. In the taking of laudanum there 
was nothing extraordinary. But by accident it drew 
upon me the special attention of my assessor on the 
box, the coachman. And in that also there was 
nothing extraordinary. But by accident, and with 
great delight, it drew my own attention to the fact 
that this coachman was a monster in point of bulk, 
and that he had but one eye. In fact, he had been 
foretold by Virgil as 
" Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." 



De Quincey 139 

He answered to the conditions in every one of the 
items: — i, a monster he was; 2, dreadful; 3, 
shapeless ; 4, huge ; 5, who had lost an eye. But 
why should that delight me? Had he been one of 
the Calendars in the " Arabian Nights," and had 
paid down his eye as the price of his criminal curi- 
osity, what right had I to exult in his misfortune ? I 
did not exult ; I delighted in no man's punishment, 
though it were even merited. But these personal 
distinctions (Nos. i, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an in- 
stant an old friend of mine whom I had known in 
the south for some years as the most masterly of 
mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe 
that could (if any could) have driven six-in-hand 
full gallop over Al Sir at — that dreadful bridge of 
Mahomet, with no side battlements, and of extra 
room not enough for a razor's edge — leading right 
across the bottomless gulf. Under this eminent man, 
whom in Greek I cognominated Cyclops Diphrelates 
(Cyclops the Charioteer), I, and others known to 
me, studied the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, 
a word too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, 
though I paid extra fees, it is to be lamented that 
I did not stand high in his esteem. It showed his 
dogged honesty (though, observe, not his discern- 
ment) that he could not see my merits. Let us 
excuse his absurdity in this particular by remem- 
bering his want of an eye. Doubtless that made him 
blind to my merits. In the art of conversation, 
however, he admitted that I had the whip-hand of 
him. On this present occasion great joy was at our 
meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here ? Had 
the medical men recommended northern air, or how ? 
I collected, from such explanations as he volun- 



140 Best English Essays 

teered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit- 
at-law now pending at Lancaster ; so that probably 
he had got himself transferred to this station for the 
purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits 
an instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. 

Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely we 
have now waited long enough. Oh, this procras- 
tinating mail, and this procrastinating post-ofhce! 
Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from me? 
Some people have called me procrastinating. Yet 
you are witness, reader, that I was here kept waiting 
for the post-office. Will the post-office lay its hand 
on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert 
that ever it waited for me? What are they about? 
The guard tells me that there is a large extra 
accumulation of foreign mails this night, owing to 
irregularities caused by war, by wind, by weather, in 
the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at 
all by steam. For an extra hour, it seems, the post- 
office has been engaged in threshing out the pure 
wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnow- 
ing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate 
towns. But at last all is finished. Sound your 
horn, guard ! Manchester, good-bye ! we 've lost 
an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office : 
which, however, though I do not mean to part with 
a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which 
really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an 
advantage, since it compels us to look sharply for 
this lost hour amongst the next eight or nine, and 
to recover it (if we can) at the rate of one mile 
extra per hour. Off we are at last, and at eleven 
miles an hour; and for the moment I detect no 
changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops. 



De Quincey 141 

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually 
(though not in law) is the capital of Westmor- 
land, there were at this time seven stages of eleven 
miles each. The first five of these, counting from 
Manchester, terminate in Lancaster ; which is there- 
fore fifty-five miles north of Manchester, and the 
same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first 
three stages terminate in Preston (called, by way 
of distinction from other towns of that name. Proud 
Preston) ; at which place it is that the separate 
roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to the 
north become confluent.^ Within these first three 
stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termi- 
nation of our night's adventure. During the first 
stage, I found out that Cyclops was mortal : he 
was liable to the shocking affection of sleep — a 
thing which previously I had never suspected. If 
a man indulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, all 
the skill in atirigation of Apollo himself, with the 
horses of Aurora to execute his notions, avails him 
nothing, " Oh, Cyclops ! " I exclaimed, " thou art 
mortal. My friend, thou snorest." Through the 
first eleven miles, however, this infirmity — which 
I grieve to say that he shared with the whole Pagan 
Pantheon — betrayed itself only by brief snatches. 
On waking up, he made an apology for himself 
which, instead of mending matters, laid open a 

"^ '■' CovfiuenV : — Suppose a capital Y (the Pythagorean 
letter): Lancaster is at the foot of this letter; Liverpool at 
the top of the right branch; Manchester at the top of the left ; 
Proud Preston at the centre, where the two branches unite. It 
is thirty-three miles along either of the two branches; it is 
twenty-two miles along the stem — viz. from Preston in the 
middle to Lancaster at the root. There 's a lesson in geography 
for the reader ! (De Quincey's note.) 



142 Best English Essays 

gloomy vista of coming disasters. The summer 
assizes, he reminded me, were now going on at 
Lancaster : in consequence of which for three nights 
and three days he had not lain down in a bed. 
During the day he was waiting for his own sum- 
mons as a witness on the trial in which he was 
interested, or else, lest he should be missing at the 
critical moment, was drinking with the other wit- 
nesses under the pastoral surveillance of the attor- 
neys. During the night, or that part of it which at 
sea would form the middle watch, he was driving. 
This explanation certainly accounted for his drow- 
siness, but in a way which made it much more 
alarming; since now, after several days' resistance 
to this infirmity, at length he was steadily giving 
way. Throughout the second stage he grew more 
and more drowsy. In the second mile of the third 
stage he surrendered himself finally and without 
a struggle to his perilous temptation. All his past 
resistance had but deepened the weight of this final 
oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep rested 
upon him ; and, to consummate the case, our worthy 
guard, after singing " Love amongst the Roses " for 
perhaps thirty times, without invitation and without 
applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself 
to slumber — not so deep, doubtless, as the coach- 
man's, but deep enough for mischief. And thus 
at last, about ten miles from Preston, it came about 
that I found myself left in charge of his Majesty's 
London and Glasgow mail, then running at the 
least twelve miles an hour. 

What made this negligence less criminal than 
else it must have been thought was the condition 
of the roads at night during the assizes. At that 



De Quincey 143 

time, all the law business of populous Liverpool, 
and also of populous Manchester, with its vast 
cincture of populous rural districts, was called up 
by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lan- 
caster. To break up this old traditional usage 
required, i, a conflict with powerful established 
interests, 2, a large system of new arrangements, 
and 3, a new parliamentary statute. But as yet 
this change was merely in contemplation. As things 
were at present, twice in the year so vast a body 
of business rolled northwards from the southern 
quarter of the county that for a fortnight at least 
it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in 
its despatch. The consequence of this was that 
every horse available for such a service, along the 
whole line of road, was exhausted in carrying down 
the multitudes of people who were parties to the 
different suits. By sunset, therefore, it usually 
happened that, through utter exhaustion amongst 
men and horses, the road sank into profound silence. 
Except the exhaustion in the vast adjacent county 
of York from a contested election, no such silence 
succeeding to no such fiery uproar was ever wit- 
nessed in England. 

On this occasion the usual silence and solitude 
prevailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel 
was to be heard. And, to strengthen this false 
luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it hap- 
pened also that the night was one of pecuHar solem- 
nity and peace. For my own part, though slightly 
alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so far yielded 
to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into 
a profound reverie. The month was August ; in the 
middle of which lay my own birthday — a festival 



144 -^^s^ English Essays 

to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and 
often sigh-born thoughts. The county was my own 
native county — upon which, in its southern section, 
more than upon any equal area known to man past 
or present, had descended the original curse of 
labor in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies 
only of men, as of slaves, or criminals in mines, 
but working through the fiery will. Upon no equal 
space of earth was, or ever had been, the same 
energy of human power put forth daily. At this 
particular season also of the assizes, that dread- 
ful hurricane of flight and pursuit, as it might 
have seemed to a stranger, which swept to and 
from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county 
up and down, and regularly subsiding back into 
silence about sunset, could not fail (when united 
with this permanent distinction of Lancashire as 
the very metropolis and citadel of labor) to point 
the thoughts pathetically upon that counter-vision 
of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, 
towards which, as to their secret haven, the pro- 
founder aspirations of man's heart are in solitude 
continually travelling. Obliquely upon our left we 
were nearing the sea ; which also must, under the 
present circumstances, be repeating the general state 
of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the 
light, bore each an orchestral part in this universal 
lull. Moonlight and the first timid tremblings of the 
dawn were by this time blending; and the blend- 
ings were brought into a still more exquisite state 
of unity by a slight silvery mist, motionless and 
dreamy, that covered the woods and fields, but with 
a veil of equable transparency. Except the feet 
of our own horses, — which, running on a sandy 



De Quincey 145 

margin of the road, made but little disturbance, — 
there was no sound abroad. In the clouds and on 
the earth prevailed the same majestic peace; and, 
in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has 
done for the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, which 
are the thoughts of our infancy, we still believe in 
no such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. What- 
ever we may swear with our false feigning lips, 
in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must 
for ever believe, in fields of air traversing the total 
gulf between earth and the central heavens. Still, 
in the confidence of children that tread without fear 
every chamber in their father's house, and to whom 
no door is closed, we, in that Sabbatic vision which 
sometimes is revealed for * an hour upon nights 
like this, ascend with easy steps from the sorrow- 
stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals of 
God. 

Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awak- 
ened to a sullen sound, as of some motion on 
the distant road. It stole upon the air for a mo- 
ment; I listened in awe; but then it died away. 
Once roused, however, I could not but observe 
with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. 
Ten years' experience had made my eye learned 
in the valuing of motion ; and I saw that we were 
now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to 
no presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is 
that I am miserably and shamefully deficient in that 
quality as regards action. The palsy of doubt and 
distraction hangs like some guilty weight of dark 
unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when 
the signal is flying for action. But, on the other 
hand, this accursed gift I have, as regards thought, 



146 Best English Essays 

that in the first step towards the possibiHty of a 
misfortune I see its total evolution ; in the radix 
of the series I see too certainly and too instantly 
its entire expansion; in the first syllable of the 
dreadful sentence I read already the last. It was 
not that I feared for ourselves. Us our bulk and 
impetus charmed against peril in any collision. And 
I had ridden through too many hundreds of perils 
that were frightful to approach, that were matter 
of laughter to look back upon, the first face of 
which was horror, the parting face a jest — for any 
anxiety to rest upon our interests. The mail was 
not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could 
betray me who trusted to its protection. But any 
carriage that we could meet would be frail and light 
in comparison of ourselves. And I remarked this 
ominous accident of our situation, — we were on 
the wrong side of the road. But then, it may be 
said, the other party, if other there was, might also 
be on the wrong side ; and two wrongs might make 
a right. That was not likely. The same motive 
which had drawn us to the right-hand side of the 
road — viz. the luxury of the soft beaten sand as 
contrasted with the paved centre — would prove 
attractive to others. The two adverse carriages 
would therefore, to a certainty, be travelling on the 
same side; and from this side, as not being ours 
in law, the crossing over to the other would, of 
course, be looked for from us. Our lamps, still 
lighted, would give the impression of vigilance on 
our part. And every creature that met us would 
rely upon us for quartering. All this, and if the 
separate links of the anticipation had been a thou- 
sand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by 



De Quincey 147 

effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid 
simultaneous intuition. 

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of 
the evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what 
a sullen mystery of fear, what a sigh of woe, was 
that which stole upon the air, as again the far-off 
sound of a wheel was heard ! A whisper it was — 
a whisper from, perhaps, four miles oft" — secretly 
announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the 
less inevitable; that, being known, was not there- 
fore healed. What could be done — who was it that 
could do it — to check the storm-flight of these 
maniacal horses? Could I not seize the reins from 
the grasp of the slumbering coachman? You, 
reader, think that it would have been in your power 
to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of 
yourself. But, from the way in which the coach- 
man's hand was viced between his upper and lower 
thigh, this was impossible. Easy was it ? See, then, 
that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider has 
kept the bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries. 
Unbridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash 
his mouth with water. Easy was it? Unhorse me, 
then, that imperial rider; knock me those marble 
feet from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne. 

The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now 
too clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what 
could it be ? Was it industry in a taxed cart ? Was 
it youthful gaiety in a gig? Was it sorrow that 
loitered, or joy that raced? For as yet the snatches 
of sound were too intermitting, from distance, to 
decipher the character of the motion. Whoever 
were the travellers, something must be done to warn 
them. Upon the other party rests the active respon- 



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sibility, but upon us — and, woe is me ! that us was 
reduced to my frail opium-shattered self — rests the 
responsibility of warning. Yet, how should this be 
accomplished? Might I not sound the guard's 
horn ? Already, on the first thought, I was making 
my way over the roof to the guard's seat. But this, 
from the accident which I have mentioned, of the 
foreign mails being piled upon the roof, was a diffi- 
cult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by 
nearly three hundred miles of outside travelling. 
And, fortunately, before I had lost much time in the 
attempt, our frantic horses swept round an angle of 
the road which opened upon us that final stage 
where the collision must be accomplished and the 
catastrophe sealed. All was apparently finished. 
The court was sitting; the case was heard; the 
judge had finished ; and only the verdict was yet 
in arrear. 

Before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, six 
hundred yards, perhaps, in length ; and the um- 
brageous trees, which rose in a regular line from 
either side, meeting high overhead, gave to it the 
character of a cathedral aisle. These trees lent a 
deeper solemnity to the early light; but there was 
still light enough to perceive, at the further end of 
this Gothic aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were 
seated a young man, and by his side a young lady. 
Ah, young sir! what are you about? If it is requi- 
site that you should whisper your communications 
to this young lady — though really I see nobody, at 
an hour and on a road so solitary, likely to overhear 
you — it is therefore requisite that you should carry 
your lips forward to hers? The little carriage is 
creeping on at one mile an hour; and the parties 



De Quincey 149 

within it, being- thus tenderly engaged, are naturally 
bending down their heads. Between them and eter- 
nity, to all human calculation, there is but a minute 
and a half. Oh, heavens ! what is it that I shall do ? 
Speaking or acting, what help can I offer ? Strange 
it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem 
laughable, that I should need a suggestion from the 
" Iliad " to prompt the sole resource that remained. 
Yet so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout 
of Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend to 
shout like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas ? No : 
but then I needed not the shout that should alarm 
all x\sia militant; such a shout would suffice as 
might carry terror into the hearts of two thought- 
less young people and one gig-horse. I shouted — 
and the young man heard me not. A second time 
I shouted — and now he heard me, for now he raised 
his head. 

Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could 
be done ; more on my part was not possible. Mine 
had been the first step ; the second was for the 
young man ; the third was for God. If, said I, this 
stranger is a brave man, and if indeed he loves the 
young girl at his side — or, loving her not, if he 
feels the obligation, pressing- upon every man 
worthy to be called a man, of doing his utmost for 
a woman confided to his protection — he will at least 
make some eft'ort to save her. If that fails, he will 
not perish the more, or by a death more cruel, for 
having made it ; and he will die as a brave man 
should, with his face to the danger, and with his 
arm about the woman that he sought in vain to save. 
But, if he makes no effort, — shrinking without a 
struggle from his duty, — he himself will not the 



150 Best English Essays 

less certainly perish for this baseness of poltroonery. 
He will die no less : and why not ? Wherefore 
should we grieve that there is one craven less in the 
world? No; let him perish, without a pitying 
thought of ours wasted upon him ; and, in that case, 
all our grief will be reserved for the fate of the 
helpless girl who now, upon the least shadow of 
failure in him, must by the fiercest of translations 
— must without time for a prayer — must within 
seventy seconds — stand before the judgment-seat 
of God. 

But craven he was not : sudden had been the call 
upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. 
He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that 
was coming down: already its gloomy shadow 
darkened above him ; and already he was measuring 
his strength to deal with it. Ah ! what a vulgar 
thing does courage seem when we see nations buy- 
ing it and selling it for a shilling a-day : ah ! what 
a sublime thing does courage seem when some fear- 
ful summons on the great deeps of life carries a 
man, as if running before a hurricane, up to the 
giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis from which 
lie two courses, and a voice says to him audibly, 
" One way lies hope ; take the other, and mourn 
for ever ! " How grand a triumph if, even then, 
amidst the raving of all around him, and the frenzy 
of the danger, the man is able to confront his situ- 
ation — is able to retire for a moment into solitude 
with God, and to seek his counsel from Him! 

For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the 
stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, 
as if to search and value every element in the con- 
flict before him. For five seconds more of his 



De Quincey 151 

seventy he sat immovably, like one that mused on 
some great purpose. For five more, perhaps, he sat 
with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, 
under some extremity of doubt, for light that should 
guide him to the better choice. Then suddenly he 
rose ; stood upright ; and, by a powerful strain upon 
the reins, raising his horse's fore-feet from the 
ground, he slewed him round on the pivot of his 
hind-legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a 
position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far 
his condition was not improved; except as a first 
step had been taken towards the possibility of a 
second. If no more were done, nothing was done; 
for the little carriage still occupied the very centre 
of our path, though in an altered direction. Yet 
even now it may not be too late: fifteen of the 
seventy seconds may still be unexhausted ; and one 
almighty bound may avail to clear the ground. 
Hurry, then, hurry ! for the flying moments — they 
hurry. Oh, hurry, hurry, my brave young man! 
for the cruel hoofs of our horses — they also hurry ! 
Fast are the flying moments, faster are the hoofs of 
our horses. But fear not for him, if human energy 
can suflice ; faithful was he that drove to his terrific 
duty ; faithful was the horse to his command. One 
blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by the 
stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if 
in the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile crea- 
ture's fore-feet upon the crown or arching centre of 
the road. The larger half of the little equipage had 
then cleared our over-towering shadow: that was 
evident even to my own agitated sight. But it 
mattered little that one wreck should float off in 
safety if upon the wreck that perished were em- 



152 Best English Essays 

barked the human freightage.- The rear part of the 
carriage — was that certainly beyond the Hne of 
absolute ruin ? What power could answer the ques- 
tion ? Glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel, 
which of these had speed enough to sweep between 
the question and the answer, and divide the one 
from the other? Light does not tread upon the 
steps of light more indivisibly than did our all- 
conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the 
gig. That must the young man have felt too plainly. 
His back was now turned to us ; not by sight could 
he any longer communicate with the peril; but, by 
the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly had his 
ear been instructed that all was finished as regarded 
any effort of his. Already in resignation he had 
rested from his struggle; and perhaps in his heart 
he was whispering, " Father, which art in heaven, 
do Thou finish above what I on earth have at- 
tempted." Faster than ever mill-race we ran past 
them in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving of hurri- 
canes that must have sounded in their young ears 
at the moment of our transit ! Even in that moment 
the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with 
the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near 
leader, we had struck the off- wheel of the little gig ; 
which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far 
advanced as to be accurately parallel with the near- 
wheel. The blow, from the fury of our passage, 
resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze 
upon the ruins we might have caused. From, my 
elevated station I looked down, and looked back 
upon the scene ; which in a moment told its own 
tale, and wrote all its records on my heart for ever. 
Here was the map of the passion that now had 



De Quincey 153 

finished. The horse was planted immovably, with 
his fore-feet upon the paved crest of the central 
road. He of the whole party might be supposed 
untouched by the passion of death. The little cany 
carriage — partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion 
of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from 
the thundering blow we had given to it — as if it 
sympathized with human horror, was all alive with 
tremblings and shiverings. The young man trem- 
bled not, nor shivered. He sat like a rock. But his 
was the steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by 
horror. As yet he dared not to look round ; for 
he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him 
it could no longer be done. And as yet he knew not 
for certain if their safety were accomplished. But 

the lady 

But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spec- 
tacle ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and 
sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her 
arms wildly to heaven, clutched at some visionary 
object in the air, fainting, praying, raving, despair- 
ing? Figure to yourself, reader, the elements of 
the case; suffer me to recall before your mind the 
circumstances of that unparalleled situation. From 
the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer 
night — from the pathetic blending of this sweet 
moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight — from the manly 
tenderness of this flattering, whispering, murmuring 
love — suddenly as from the woods and fields — 
suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening 
in revelation — suddenly as from the ground yawn- 
ing at her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing 
of cataracts, Death the crowned phantom, with all 
the equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his 
voice. 



154 ^Gst English Essays 

The moments were numbered ; the strife was 
finished ; the vision was closed. In the twinkling 
of an eye, our flying horses had carried us to the 
termination of the umbrageous aisle; at the right 
angles we wheeled into our former direction; the 
turn of the road carried the scene out of my eyes 
in an instant, and swept it into my dreams for ever. 



Section III — Dream-Fugue : 

FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN 
DEATH 

" Whence the sound 
Of instruments, that made melodious chime, 
Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved 
Their stops and chords was seen ; liis volant touch 
Instinct through all proportions, low and high. 
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue." 

Par. Lost, Bk. XI. 

Tiimultiiosissimamente 

Passion of sudden death! that once in youth I 
read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted 
signs ! ^ — rapture of panic taking the shape (which 
amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman 
bursting her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic 
form bending forward from the ruins of her grave 
with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped 
adoring hands — waiting, watching, trembling, pray- 

1 ^'Averted signs": — I read the course and changes of the 
lady's agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures ; but 
it must be remembered that I read all this from the rear, never 
once catching the lady's full face, and even her profile imper- 
fectly. (De Quincey's note.) 



De Quincey 155 

ing for the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever ! 
Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on 
the brink of almighty abysses ! — vision that didst 
start back, that didst reel away, like a shrivelling 
scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on 
the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief of horror, 
wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing 
so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that 
still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon 
the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Fragment of 
music too passionate, heard once, and heard no 
more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling chords 
come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep, 
and after forty years have lost no element of horror ? 



Lo, it is summer — almighty summer! The 
everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown 
open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant 
as a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful 
vision and I myself are floating — she upon a fairy 
pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker. Both 
of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within 
the domain of our common country, within that 
ancient watery park, within the pathless chase of 
ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a hunt- 
ress through winter and summer, from the rising to 
the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of floral 
beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon 
the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved ! 
And upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers : 
young women how lovely, young men how noble. 



156 Best English Essays 

that were dancing together, and slowly drifting 
towards 11s amidst music and incense, amidst blos- 
soms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from 
vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the echoes 
of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears 
us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears 
beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, 
as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the 
carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — 
all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, 
meeting or overtaking her? Did ruin to our 
friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? 
Was our shadow the shadow of death? I looked 
over the bow for an answer, and, behold! the pin- 
nace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers 
were found no more; the glory of the vintage was 
dust; and the forests with their beauty were left 
without a witness upon the seas. '' But where," 
and I turned to our crew — " where are the lovely 
women that danced beneath the awning of flowers 
and clustering corymbi? Whither have fled the 
noble young men that danced with them? " An- 
swer there was none. But suddenly the man at the 
mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm, 
cried out, '' Sail on the weather beam ! Down she 
comes upon us : in seventy seconds she also will 
founder." 

II 

I looked to the weather side, and the summer had 
departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with 
gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, 
which grouped themselves into arches and long 
cathedral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery 



De Quincey 157 

pace of a quarrel from a cross-bow, ran a frigate 
right athwart our course. '' Are they mad ? " some 
voice exclaimed from our deck. " Do they woo 
their ruin ? " But in a moment, as she was close 
upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local 
vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off 
she forged without a shock. As she ran past us, 
high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the 
pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice to 
receive her, towering surges of foam ran after her, 
the billows were fierce to catch her. But far away 
she was borne into desert spaces of the sea : whilst 
still by sight I followed her, as she ran before the 
howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by 
maddening billows ; still I saw her, as at the mo- 
ment when she ran past us, standing amongst the 
shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before 
the wind. There she stood, with hair dishevelled, 
one hand clutched amongst the tackling — rising, 
sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying; there for 
leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals 
one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the 
pursuing waves and the raving of the storm ; until 
at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter 
and mockery, all was hidden for ever in driving 
showers; and afterwards, but when I know not, 
nor how. 

Ill 

Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable dis- 
tance, wailing over the dead that die before the 
dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to 
some familiar shore. The morning twilight even 
then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations 



158 Best English Essays 

which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a gar- 
land of white roses about her head for some great 
festival, running along the solitary strand in ex- 
tremity of haste. Her running was the running of 
panic ; and often she looked back as to some dread- 
ful enemy in the rear. But, when I leaped ashore, 
and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril in 
front, alas ! from me she fled as from another peril, 
and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay 
ahead. Faster and faster she ran ; round a promon- 
tory of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant 
I also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacher- 
ous sands gathering above her head. Already her 
person was buried ; only the fair young head and 
the diadem of white roses around it were still visible 
to the pitying heavens ; and, last of all, was visible 
one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight 
this fair young head, as it was sinking down to 
darkness — saw this marble arm, as it rose above 
her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, falter- 
ing, rising, clutching, as at some false deceiving 
hand stretched out from the clouds — saw this mar- 
ble arm uttering her dying hope, and then utter- 
ing her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the 
arm — these all had sunk ; at last over these also 
the cruel quicksand had closed; and no memorial 
of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my 
own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the 
desert seas, that, rising again more softly, sang a 
requiem over the grave of the buried child, and over 
her blighted dawn. 

I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have 
ever given to the memory of those that died before 
the dawn, and by the treachery of earth, our mother. 



De Quincey 159 

But suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed 
by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from 
some great king's artillery, advancing rapidly along 
the valleys, and heard afar by echoes from the moun- 
tains. *' Hush ! " I said, as I bent my ear earth- 
wards to listen — *' hush ! — this either is the very 
anarchy of strife, or else " — and then I listened 
more profoundly, and whispered as I raised my 
head — " or else, oh, heavens ! it is victory that is 
final, victory that swallows up all strife." 

IV 

Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land 
and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon 
a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned with 
laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brood- 
ing over all the land, hid from us the mighty crowds 
that were weaving restlessly about ourselves as a 
centre : we heard them, but saw them not. Tidings 
had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that 
measured itself against centuries ; too full of pathos 
they were, too full of joy, to utter themselves by 
other language than by tears, by restless anthems, 
and " Te Deums " reverberated from the choirs and 
orchestras of earth. These tidings we that sat upon 
the laurelled car had it for our privilege to publish 
amongst all nations. And already, by signs audible 
through the darkness, by snortings and tramplings, 
our angry horses, that knew no fear of fleshly 
weariness, upbraided us with delay. Wherefore 
was it that we delayed? We waited for a secret 
word, that should bear witness to the hope of na- 
tions as now accomplished for ever. At midnight 



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the secret word arrived ; which word was — Wat- 
erloo and Recovered Christendom! The dreadful 
word shone by its own light; before us it went; 
high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a 
golden light over the paths which we traversed. 
Every city, at the presence of the secret word, threw 
open its gates. The rivers were conscious as we 
. crossed. All the forests, as we ran along their mar- 
gins, shivered in homage to the secret word. And 
the darkness comprehended it. 

Two hours after midnight we approached a 
mighty Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds, 
were closed. But, when the dreadful word that 
rode before us reached them with its golden light, 
silently they moved back upon their hinges ; and at 
a flying gallop our equipage entered the grand aisle 
of the cathedral. Headlong was our pace; and at 
every altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the 
right hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying 
or sickening, kindled anew in sympathy with the 
secret word that was flying past. Forty leagues we 
might have run in the cathedral, and as yet no 
strength of morning light had reached us, when 
before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and 
choir. Every pinnacle of the fretwork, every station 
of advantage amongst the traceries, was crested by 
white-robed choristers that sang deliverance; that 
wept no more tears, as once their fathers had wept ; 
but at intervals that sang together to the generations, 
saying, 

** Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue," 

and receiving answers from afar, 

" Such as once in heaven and earth were sung." 



De Quincey i6i 

And of their chanting was no end ; of our headlong 
pace was neither pause nor slackening. 

Thus as we ran like torrents — thus as we swept 
with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo of the 
cathedral graves — suddenly we became aware of 
a vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon — 
a city of sepulchres, built within the saintly cathe- 
dral for the warrior dead that rested from their 
feuds on earth. Of purple granite was the necropo- 
lis; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple 
stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance. 
In the second minute it trembled through many 
changes, growing into terraces and towers of won- 
drous altitude, so mighty was the pace. In the third 
minute already, with our dreadful gallop, we were 
entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi rose on every 
side, having towers and turrets that, upon the limits 
of the central aisle, strode forward with haughty 
intrusion, that ran back with mighty shadows into 
answering recesses. Every sarcophagus showed 
many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of 
battle-fields; battles from forgotten ages, battles 
from yesterday ; battle-fields that, long since, nature 
had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet 
oblivion of flowers ; battle-fields that were yet angry 
and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, 
there did we run ; where the towers curved, there 
did tve curve. With the flight of swallows our 
horses swept round every angle. Like rivers in 
flood wheeling round headlands, like hurricanes that 
ride into the secrets of forests, faster than ever 
light unwove the mazes of darkness, our flying 
equipage carried earthly passions, kindled warrior 
instincts, amongst the dust that lay around us — 



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dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had slept 
in God from Creci to Trafalgar. And now had we 
reached the last sarcophagus, now were we abreast 
of the last bas-relief, already had we recovered the 
arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle, when 
coming up this aisle to meet us we beheld afar off a 
female child, that rode in a carriage as frail as 
flowers. The mists which went before her hid the 
fawns that drew her, but could not hide the shells 
and tropic flowers with which she played — but 
could not hide the lovely smiles by which she ut- 
tered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in the 
cherubim that looked down upon her from the 
mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to face she was 
meeting us ; face to face she rode, as if danger there 
were none. '' Oh, baby ! " I exclaimed, " shalt thou 
be the ransom for Waterloo? Must we, that carry 
tidings of great joy to every people, be messengers 
of ruin to thee ! " In horror I rose at the thought ; 
but then also, in horror at the thought, rose one that 
was sculptured on a bas-relief — a Dying Trum- 
peter. Solemnly from the field of battle he rose to 
his feet ; and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried 
it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips — sounding 
once, and yet once again ; proclamation that, in thy 
ears, oh, baby ! spoke from the battlements of death. 
Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and 
aboriginal silence. The choir had ceased to sing. 
The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful rattle of our 
harness, the groaning of our wheels, alarmed the 
graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had been 
unlocked tmto life. By horror we, that were so full 
of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery fore- 
legs rising in mid-air to their everlasting gallop. 



De Quincey 163 

were frozen to a bas-relief. Then a third time the 
trumpet sounded ; the seals were taken off all pulses ; 
life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their channels 
again; again the choir burst forth in sunny gran- 
deur, as from the muffling of storms and darkness ; 
again the thunderings of our horses carried tempta- 
tion into the graves. One cry burst from our lips, 
as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it 
empty before us. — " Whither has the infant fled ? 
— is the young child caught up to God ? " Lo ! afar 
off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to 
the clouds ; and on a level with their summits, at 
height insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest 
alabaster. On its eastern face was trembling a 
crimson glory. A glory was it from the reddening 
dawn that now streamed through the windows? 
Was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs 
painted on the windows? Was it from the bloody 
bas-reliefs of earth? There, suddenly, within that 
crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's 
head, and then of a woman's figure. The child it 
was — grown up to woman's height. CHnging to 
the horns of the altar, voiceless she stood — sinking, 
rising, raving, despairing ; and behind the volume of 
incense that, night and day, streamed upwards from 
the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the 
shadow of that dreadful being who should have bap- 
tised her with the baptism of death. But by her side 
was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with 
wings ; that wept and pleaded for her; that prayed 
when she could not; that fought with Heaven by 
tears for her deliverance ; which also, as he raised his 
immortal countenance from his wings, I saw, by the 
glory in his eye, that from Heaven he had won at last. 



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Then was completed the passion of the mighty 
fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet 
had but muttered at intervals — gleaming amongst 
clouds and surges of incense — threw up, as from 
fountains unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering 
music. Choir and anti-choir were filling fast with 
unknown voices. Thou also. Dying Trumpeter, 
with thy love that was victorious, and thy anguish 
that was finishing, didst enter the tumult ; trumpet 
and echo — farewell love, and farewell anguish — 
rang through the dreadful sanctus. Oh, darkness 
of the grave ! that from the crimson altar and from 
the fiery font wert visited and searched by the efful- 
gence in the angel's eye — were these indeed thy 
children? Pomps of life, that, from the burials of 
centuries, rose again to the voice of perfect joy, did 
ye indeed mingle with the festivals of Death? Lo! 
as I looked back for seventy leagues through the 
mighty cathedral, I saw the quick and the dead that 
sang together to God, together that sang to the 
generations of man. All the hosts of jubilation, like 
armies that ride in pursuit, moved with one step. 
Us, that, with laurelled heads, were passing from 
the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a garment, 
they wrapped us round with thunders greater than 
our own. As brothers we moved together; to the 
dawn that advanced, to the stars that fled; render- 
ing thanks to God in the highest — that, having hid 
His face through one generation behind thick clouds 
of War, once again was ascending, from the Campo 
Santo of Waterloo was ascending, in the visions 



De Quincey 165 

of Peace; rendering thanks for thee, young girl! 
whom having overshadowed with His ineffable 
passion of death, suddenly did God relent, suffered 
thy angel to turn aside His arm, and even in thee, 
sister unknown ! shown to me for a moment only to 
be hidden for ever, found an occasion to glorify His 
goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phan- 
toms of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of 
the golden dawn, with the secret word riding before 
thee, with the armies of the grave behind thee, — 
seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing; a 
thousand times in the worlds of sleep have seen thee 
followed by God's angel through storms, through 
desert seas, through the darkness of quicksands, 
through dreams and the dreadful revelations that 
are in dreams; only that at the last, with one sling 
of His victorious arm. He might snatch thee back 
from ruin, and might emblazon in thy deliverance 
the endless resurrections of His love! 



LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 
(Suspiria de Profimdis) 

OFTENTIMES at Oxford I saw Levana in my 
dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. 
Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to 
have leisure for very much scholarship, you will 
not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was 
the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born 
infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness, — 
typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs 
to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers 



1 66 Best English Essays 

invisible which even in Pagan worlds sometimes 
descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, 
just as the infant tasted for the first time the at- 
mosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the 
ground. That might bear different interpretations. 
But immediately, lest so grand a creature should 
grovel there for more than one instant, either the 
paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or 
some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised 
it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this 
world, and presented its forehead to the stars, say- 
ing, perhaps, in his heart, " Behold what is greater 
than yourselves ! " This symbolic act. represented 
the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, 
who never revealed her face (except to me in 
dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her 
name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian 
verb) levare, to raise aloft. 

This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it 
has arisen that some people have understood by 
Levana the tutelary power that controls the educa- 
tion of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at 
his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation 
for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to 
suffer the real degradation attaching to the non- 
development of his powers. She therefore watches 
over human education. Now, the word educo, with 
the penultimate short, was derived (by a process 
often exemplified in the crystallisation of lan- 
guages) from the word educo, with the penultimate 
long. Whatsoever educes, or develops, educates. 
By the education of Levana, therefore, is meant, — 
not the poor machinery that moves by spelling-books 
and grammars, but by that mighty system of central 



De Quincey 167 

forces hidden in the deep bosom of human life, 
which by passion, by strife, by temptation, by the 
energies of resistance, works for ever upon children, 
— resting not day or night, any more than the 
mighty wheel of day and night themselves, whose 
moments, like restless spokes, are glimmering for 
ever as they revolve. 

If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana 
works, how profoundly must she reverence the 
agencies of grief ! But you, reader, think that chil- 
dren generally are not liable to grief such as mine. 
There are two senses in the word generally, — the 
sense of Euclid, where it means universally (or in 
the whole extent of the genus), and a foolish sense 
of this world, where it means usually. Now, I am 
far from saying that children universally are capable 
of grief like mine. But there are more than you 
ever heard of who die of grief in this island of ours. 
I will tell you a common case. The rules of Eton 
require that a boy on the foundation should be there 
twelve years : he is superannuated at eighteen ; con- 
sequently he must come at six. Children torn away 
from mothers and sisters at that age not unfre- 
quently die. I speak of what I know. The com- 
plaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; but 
that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has 
killed more than ever have been counted amongst 
its martyrs. 

Therefore it is that Levana often communes with 
the powers that shake man's heart; therefore it is 
that she dotes upon grief. '' These ladies," said I 
softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom 
Levana was conversing, " these are the Sorrows ; 
and they are three in number: as the Graces are 



1 68 Best English Essays 

three, who dress man's Ufe with beauty ; the Parcce 
are three, who weave the dark arras of man's Hfe 
in their mysterious loom always with colours sad in 
part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and 
black ; the Furies are three, who visit with retribu- 
tions called from the other side of the grave offences 
that walk upon this ; and once even the Muses were 
but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, 
to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. 
These are the Sorrows ; all three of whom I know." 
The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said, 
" one of whom I know, and the others too surely I 
shall know." For already, in my fervent youth, I 
saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background of 
my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful 
Sisters. 

These Sisters — by what name shall we call them ? 
If I say simply *' The Sorrows," there will be a 
chance of mistaking the term ; it might be under- 
stood of individual sorrow, — separate cases of sor- 
row, — whereas I want a term expressing the mighty 
abstractions that incarnate themselves in all individ- 
ual sufferings of man's heart, and I wish to have 
these abstractions presented as impersonations, — 
that is, as clothed with human attributes of life, and 
with functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them, 
therefore, Our Ladies of Sorrozv. 

I know them thoroughly, and have walked in all 
their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mys- 
terious household ; and their paths are wide apart ; 
but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw 
often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about 
myself. Do they talk, then ? O no ! Mighty phan- 
toms like these disdain the infirmities of language. 



De Quincey 169 

They may utter voices through the organs of man 
when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst 
themselves is no voice nor sound ; eternal silence 
reigns in their kingdoms. They spoke not as they 
talked with Levana ; they whispered not ; they sang 
not ; though oftentimes methought they might have 
sung: for I upon earth had heard their mysteries 
oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dul- 
cimer and organ. Like God, whose servants they 
are, they utter their pleasure not by sounds that 
perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in 
heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret 
rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and hiero- 
glyphics written on the tablets of the brain. They 
wheeled in mazes; / spelled the steps. They tele- 
graphed from afar; / read the signals. They con- 
spired together; and on the mirrors of darkness 
my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols ; 
mine are the words. 

What is it the Sisters are? What is it that they 
do ? Let me describe their form and their presence, 
if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline, or 
presence it were that for ever advanced to the front 
or for ever receded amongst shades. 

The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- 
marum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night 
and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. 
She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of 
lamentation, — Rachel weeping for her children, 
and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood 
in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword 
swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet 
were stiffened for ever which, heard at times as 
they trotted along floors overhead, woke pulses of 



lyo Best English Essays 

love in household hearts that were not unmarked in 
heaven. Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and 
sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, 
oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a 
diadem round her head. And I knew by childish 
memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, 
when she heard the sobbing of litanies, or the thun- 
dering of organs, and when she beheld the muster- 
ing of summer clouds. This Sister, the elder, it is, 
that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, 
which open every cottage and every palace. She, 
to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the bedside 
of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly 
I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, 
with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations 
of play and village mirth, to travel all day long on 
dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did 
God send her a great reward. In the spring time 
of the year, and whilst yet her own spring was bud- 
ding. He recalled her to himself. But her bhnd 
father mourns for ever over her: still he dreams at 
midnight that the little guiding hand is locked 
within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness 
that is now within a second and a deeper darkness. 
This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting all 
this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the 
Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less 
pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and 
left behind her a darkness not less profound. By 
the power of the keys it is that Our Lady of Tears 
glides, a ghostly intruder, into the chambers of 
sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, 
from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. 
And her, because she is the first-born of her house, 



De Quincey 171 

and has the widest empire, let us honour with the 
title of " Madonna." 

The second Sister is called Mater Suspirioriim, 
Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, 
nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no 
diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, 
would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could 
read their story ; they would be found filled with 
perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten 
delirium. But she raises not her eyes ; her head, on 
which sits a dilapidated turban, droops for ever, for 
ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She 
groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. 
Her sister. Madonna, is oftentimes stormy and 
frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and 
demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of 
Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of 
rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. 
Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. 
Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper 
she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter 
she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are 
desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when 
the sun has gone down to his rest. This Sister is 
the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bonds- 
man to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys ; of the 
Enghsh criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from 
the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England ; 
of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes for ever 
upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the 
altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, 
on which altar no oblations can now be availing, 
whether towards pardon that he might implore, or 
towards reparation that he might attempt. Every 



172 Best English Essays 

slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun 
with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to 
the earth, our general mother, but for him a step- 
mother, as he points with the other hand to the 
Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed 
and sequestered; every woman sitting in dark- 
ness, without love to shelter her head, or hope to 
illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born in- 
stincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affec- 
tions, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, 
having been stifled by social necessities, now burn 
sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the 
ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning 
May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will 
judge ; every captive in every dungeon ; all that are 
betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by tra- 
ditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace: 
all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also 
carries a key ; but she needs it little. For her king- 
dom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the 
houseless vagrants of every clime. Yet in the very 
highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own ; 
and even in glorious England there are some that, 
to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the 
reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark 
upon their foreheads. 

But the third Sister, who is also the young- 
est ! Hush! whisper whilst we talk of her! 

Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should 
live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. 
Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost 
beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and 
her eyes, rising so high, might be hidden by dis- 
tance. But, being what they are, they cannot be 



De Quincey 173 

hidden : through the treble veil of crape which she 
wears the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests 
not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or 
noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be 
read from the very ground. She is the defier of 
God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the 
suggestress of suicides. Deep He the roots of her 
power ; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For 
she can approach only those in whom a profound 
nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; 
in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks 
under conspiracies of tempest from without and 
tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncer- 
tain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. 
Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. 
But this youngest Sister moves with incalculable 
motions, bounding, and with tiger's leaps. She 
carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst 
men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted 
to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum, 
— our Lady of Darkness. 

These were the Semnai Theai or Sublime God- 
desses, these were the Eiimeitides or Gracious Ladies 
(so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation), 
of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke 
by her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she 
beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs; and what she 
spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in 
dreams) no man reads, was this : — 

" Lo ! here is he whom in childhood I dedicated 
to my altars. This is he that once I made my dar- 
ling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled ; and from 
heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. 
Through me did he become idolatrous ; and through 



174 ^sst English Essays 

me it was, by languishing desires, that he wor- 
shipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. 
Holy was the grave to him ; lovely was its darkness ; 
saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I 
have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs ! 
Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him 
for our dreadful sister. And thou," — turning to 
the Mater Tenebrarum, she said, — " wicked sister, 
that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from 
hen See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. 
Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near 
him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope; 
wither the relenting of love ; scorch the fountains of 
tears ; curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall 
he be accomplished in the furnace ; so shall he see 
the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are 
abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So 
shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, 
fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. 
And so shall our commission be accompHshed which 
from God we had, — to plague his heart until we 
had unfolded the capacities of his spirit." 



VI 

CARLYLE 



CARLYLE : 

THE LATTER-DAY PROPHET 

WE have observed the immense influence 
of the conversational, familiar-letter 
style on modern essay writing; but 
while it has given us some of our most delight- 
ful literature, it is by no means the only influ- 
ence we must reckon with. The influence of 
the pulpit has been enormous and important. In 
Swift we saw one form of preaching, — a preach- 
ing almost wholly destructive and devoid of per- 
sonal inspiration. In Carlyle we find an original 
" prophet," after the manner of the prophets of 
the Old Testament. As he is an original prophet 
he is of course debarred from a church that is 
trammelled by the conventions of time; and 
among a people whose mission in the world is 
not religious in the sense that the mission of the 
old Hebrews was religious, our' prophet need not 
be a distinctively religious man. He is a true 
prophet none the less. Such was Carlyle. 

Like other prophets, he must compel men. He 
does not win them by gentle persuasion. Rather 
he threatens. He forces attention by his singu- 
larity. He assumes authority, and as the mouth- 

12 



178 Best English Essays 

piece of a Greater than himself, he speaks like 
a sort of tyrant, in enigmas which men must un- 
ravel for themselves, and which they do unravel 
in fear and trembling. 

For ordinary purposes, Carlyle's style is as bad 
as it can be. His only excuse for capitalizing 
many of the words he does is his desire to make 
words seem to mean more than ordinarily they 
do mean. His words seem to come with the 
utmost difficulty, and indeed we read that writing 
with him was a constant pain. He appears con- 
stantly to violate his own theory as expressed 
in " Characteristics " that Art should be uncon- 
scious, for in his writing he is often too painfully 
conscious. 

We can understand Carlyle's style only when 
we consider its object. He was a preacher, and it 
was his mission to compel the attention of men 
to thoughts and duties he knew they would be 
very loath to give heed to. Oddity, mystery, ab- 
ruptness, a dictatorial tone under such conditions 
are not only justifiable, but necessary. They con- 
stitute the best art. So long as they are not a 
mere affectation, but are the sign and symbol of 
a great utterance and a high duty, they are but the 
means of gaining the attention- without which the 
whole communication of thought would have 
proved fruitless. 

Carlyle's gospel found expression first of all 
in his " Sartor Resartus," which professed to be 
a "philosophy of clothes." This book was written 



Carlyle 179 

in his most difficult style. In it his peculiar 
modes of expression reach their extreme, and it 
is not surprising that he found difficulty in get- 
ting a publisher. He went to London in quest of 
one, and not succeeding, he wrote his essay 
" Characteristics," which was accepted at once 
by " Fraser's Magazine," and published without 
alteration, becoming immediately popular, while 
" Sartor Resartus " waited long for its publisher 
and still longer for its audience. In '' Charac- 
teristics " Carlyle had expressed in simple and 
natural form, with restraint and little conscious- 
ness of effort, the heart of the philosophy which 
is to be found in " Sartor Resartus." If we 
have time for a book, and a book to be read line 
by line and accepted as a gospel, " Sartor Re- 
sartus" will well repay our effort to master it. 
But if, like the average reader, we have time for 
but a single essay, the comparatively slight un- 
conventionality of " Characteristics " will afford 
all the stimulus that we shall need to rouse us 
to the full importance of the message the author 
has to convey. As a model of style, too, it is far 
safer for study and imitation than any other 
great thing Carlyle ever wrote. 



i8o Best English Essays 

CHARACTERISTICS ^ 

[1831] 

THE healthy know not of their health, but only 
the sick: this is the Physician's Aphorism; 
and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. 
We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, 
political, poetical, than in merely corporeal thera- 
peutics ; that wherever, or in what shape soever, 
powers of the sort which can be named vital are at 
work, herein lies the test of their working right or 
working wrong. 

In the Body, for example, as all doctors are 
agreed, the first condition of complete health is, that 
each organ perform its function unconsciously, un- 
heeded; let but any organ announce its separate 
existence, were it even boastfully, and for pleasure, 
not for pain, then already has one of those un- 
fortunate " false centres of sensibility " established 
itself, already is derangement there. The perfection 
of bodily well-being is, that the collective bodily 
activities seem one; and be manifested, moreover, 
not in themselves, but in the action they accomplish. 
If a Dr. Kitchiner boast that his system is in high 

1 Edinburgh Review, No. ioS. — i. An Essay on the Origin 
and Prospects of Man. By Thomas Hope. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 
1831. 

2. PhilosopJiische Vorlestingen, insbesondere iiber Philosophie der 
Sprache nnd des Wortes. Geschrieben und vorgetragen zu Dresden 
im December^ 1828, und in den ersten Tagen des yanuars, 1829 
(Philosophical Lectures, especially on the Philosophy of Lan- 
guage and the Gift of Speech. Written and delivered at Dresden 
in December, 1828, and the early days of January, 1829). By 
Friedrich von Schlegel. 8vo. Vienna, 1S30. 



Carlyle i8i 

order, Dietetic Philosophy may indeed take credit; 
but the true Peptician was that Countryman who 
answered that, '' for his part, he had no system." 
(In fact, unity, agreement is always silent, or soft- 
voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims it- 
self.) So long as the several elements of Life, all 
fitly adjusted, can pour forth their movement like 
harmonious tuned strings, it is a melody and unison ; 
Life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as in 
celestial music and diapason, — which also, like that 
other music of the spheres, even because it is pe- 
rennial and complete, without interruption and with- 
out imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear. 
Thus too, in some languages, is the state of health 
well denoted by a term expressing unity ; when we 
feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say that we are 
whole. 

Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently 
blessed with that felicity of *' having no system " ; 
nevertheless, most of us, looking back on young 
years, may remember seasons of a light, aerial trans- 
lucency and elasticity and perfect freedom ; the 
body had not yet become the prison-house of the 
soul, but was its vehicle and implement, like a crea- 
ture of the thought, and altogether pliant to its 
bidding. We knew not that we had limbs, we only 
lifted, hurled and leapt ; through eye and ear, and 
all avenues of sense, came clear unimpeded tidings 
from without, and from within issued clear victo- 
rious force; we stood as in the centre of Nature, 
giving and receiving, in harmony with it all ; unlike 
Virgil's Husbandmen, " too happy because we did 
not know our blessedness." In those days, health 
and sickness were foreign traditions that did not 



1 82 Best English Essays 

concern us; our whole being was as yet One, the 
whole man like an incorporated Will. Such, were 
Rest or ever-successful Labour the human lot, might 
our Hfe continue to be: a pure, perpetual, unre- 
garded music; a beam of perfect white light, 
rendering all things visible, but itself unseen, even 
because it was of that perfect whiteness, and no 
irregular obstruction had yet broken it into colours. 
The beginning of Inquiry is Disease : all Science, if 
we consider well, as it must have originated in the 
feeling of something being wrong, so it is and con- 
tinues to be but Division, Dismemberment, and 
partial healing of the wrong. Thus, as was of old 
written, the Tree of Knowledge springs from a root 
of evil, and bears fruits of good and evil. Had 
Adam remained in Paradise, there had been no 
Anatomy and no Metaphysics. 

But, alas, as the Philosopher declares, *' Life itself 
is a disease ; a working incited by suffering " ; 
action from passion ! The memory of that first state 
of Freedom and paradisaic Unconsciousness has 
faded away into an ideal poetic dream. We stand 
here too conscious of many things : with Knowl- 
edge, the symptom of Derangement, we must even 
do our best to restore a little Order. Life is, in few 
instances, and at rare intervals, the diapason of a 
heavenly melody; oftenest the fierce jar of disrup- 
tions and convulsions, which, do what we will, there 
is no disregarding. Nevertheless, such is still the 
wish of Nature on our behalf; in all vital action, 
her manifest purpose and effort is, that we should 
be unconscious of it, and, like the peptic Country- 
man, never know that we " have a system." For, 
indeed, vital action everywhere is emphatically a 



Carlyle 1 83 

means, not an end ; Life is not given us for the mere 
sake of Living, but always with an ulterior external 
Aim : neither is it on the process, on the means, but 
rather on the result, that Nature, in any of her 
doings, is wont to intrust us with insight and voli- 
tion. Boundless as is the domain of man, it is but 
a small fractional proportion of it that he rules with 
Consciousness and by Forethought: what he can 
contrive, nay what he can altogether know and com- 
prehend, is essentially the mechanical, small; the 
great is ever, in one sense or other, the vital; it is 
essentially the mysterious, and only the surface of it 
can be understood. But Nature, it might seem, 
strives, like a kind mother, to hide from us even this, 
that she is a mystery : she will have us rest on her 
beautiful and awful bosom as if it were our secure 
home; on the bottomless boundless Deep, whereon 
all human things fearfully and wonderfully swim, 
she will have us walk and build, as if the film which 
supported us there (which any scratch of a bare 
bodkin will rend asunder, any sputter of a pistol- 
shot instantaneously burn up) were no film, but a 
solid rock-foundation. For ever in the neighbour- 
hood of an inevitable Death, man can forget that he 
is born to die ; of his Life, which, strictly meditated, 
contains in it an Immensity and an Eternity, he can 
conceive lightly, as of a simple implement where- 
with to do day-labour and earn wages. So cunningly 
does Nature, the mother of all highest Art, which 
only apes her from afar, " body forth the Finite 
from the Infinite " ; and guide man safe on his 
wondrous path, not more by endowing him with 
vision, than, at the right place, with blindness! 
Under all her works, chiefly under her noblest work, 



184 Best English Essays 

Life, lies a basis of Darkness, which she benig- 
nantly conceals; in Life too, the roots and inward 
circulations which stretch down fearfully to the 
regions of Death and Night, shall not hint of their 
existence, and only the fair stem with its leaves and 
flowers, shone on by the fair sun, shall disclose itself, 
and joyfully grow. 

However, without venturing into the abstruse, or 
too eagerly asking Why and How, in things where 
our answer must needs prove, in great part, an echo 
of the question, let us be content to remark farther, 
in the merely historical way, how that Aphorism of 
the bodily Physician holds good in quite other de- 
partments. Of the Soul, with her activities, we shall 
find it no less true than of the Body : nay, cry the 
Spiritualists, is not that very division of the unity, 
Man, into a dualism of Soul and Body, itself the 
symptom of disease; as, perhaps, your frightful 
theory of Materialism, of his being but a Body, and 
therefore, at least, on • more a unity, may be the 
paroxysm which was critical, and the beginning of 
cure! But omitting this, we observe, with confi- 
dence enough, that the truly strong mind, view it 
as Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect, 
is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; 
that here as before the sign of health is Uncon- 
sciousness. In our inward, as in our outward world, 
what is mechanical lies open to us : not what is 
dynamical and has vitality. Of our Thinking, we 
might say, it is but the mere upper surface that we 
shape into articulate Thoughts ; — underneath the 
region of argument and conscious discourse, lies 
the region of meditation ; here, in its quiet mys- 
terious depths, dwells what vital force is in us; 



Carlyle 185 

here, if aught is to be created, and not merely man- 
ufactured and communicated, must the work go on. 
Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial ; Creation is 
great, and cannot be understood. Thus if the De- 
bater and Demonstrator, whom we may rank as the 
lowest of true thinkers, knows what he has done, 
and how he did it, the Artist, whom we rank as the 
highest, knows not ; must speak of Inspiration, and 
in one or the other dialect, call his work the gift of 
a divinity. 

But on the whole, " genius is ever a secret to 
itself " ; of this old truth we have, on all sides, daily 
evidence. The Shakespeare takes no airs for writ- 
ing " Hamlet " and the " Tempest," understands 
not that it is anything surprising: Milton, again, is 
more conscious of his faculty, which accordingly 
is an inferior one. On the other hand, what cack- 
ling and strutting must we not often hear and see, 
when, in some shape of academical prolusion, maiden 
speech, review article, this or the other well-fledged 
goose has produced its goose-egg, of quite measur- 
able value, were it the pink of its whole kind; and 
wonders why all mortals do not wonder ! 

Foolish enough, too, was the College Tutor's 
surprise at Walter Shandy : how, though unread in 
Aristotle, he could nevertheless argue; and not 
knowing the name of any dialectic tool, handled 
them all to perfection. Is it the skilfulest anatomist 
that cuts the best figure at Sadler's Wells? or does 
the boxer hit better for knowing that he has a 
Hex or longiis and a flexor hrevis? But indeed, as 
in the higher case of the Poet, so here in that of the 
Speaker and Inquirer, the true force is? an uncon- 
scious one. The healthy Understanding, we should 



1 86 Best English Essays 

say, is not the Logical, argumentative, but the In- 
tuitive ; for the end of Understanding is not to prove 
and find reasons, but to know and beUeve. Of logic, 
and its limits, and uses and abuses, there were much 
to be said and examined ; one fact, however, which 
chiefly concerns us here, has long been familiar: 
that the man of logic and the man of insight; the 
Reasoner and the Discoverer, or even Knower, are 
quite separable, — indeed, for most part, quite sep- 
arate characters. In practical matters, for example, 
has it not become almost proverbial that the man of 
logic cannot prosper? This is he whom business- 
people call Systematic and Theoriser and Word- 
monger; his vital intellectual force lies dormant or 
extinct, his whole force is mechanical, conscious: 
of such a one it is foreseen that, when once con- 
fronted with the infinite complexities of the real 
world, his little compact theorem of the world will 
be found wanting ; that unless he can throw it over- 
board and become a new creature, he will necessarily 
founder. Nay, in mere Speculation itself, the most 
ineffectual of all characters, generally speaking, is 
your dialectic man-at-arms ; were he armed cap-a-pie 
in syllogistic mail of proof, and perfect master of 
logic-fence, how little does it avail him! Consider 
the old Schoolmen, and their pilgrimage towards 
Truth: the faithfulest endeavour, incessant unwea- 
ried motion, often great natural vigour; only no 
progress : nothing but antic feats of one limb poised 
against the other ; there they balanced, somersetted, 
and made postures; at best gyrated swiftly, with 
some pleasure, Hke Spinning Dervishes, and ended 
where they began. So is it, so will it always be, 
with all System-makers and builders of logical card- 



Carlyle 187 

castles; of which class a certain remnant must, in 
every age, as they do in our own, survive and build. 
Logic is good, but it is not the best. The Irref- 
ragable Doctor, with his chains of induction, his 
corollaries, dilemmas and other cunning logical dia- 
grams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful 
horoscope, and speak reasonable things ; neverthe- 
less your stolen jewel, which you wanted him to find 
you, is not forthcoming. Often by some winged 
word, winged as the thunderbolt is, of a Luther, a 
Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see the difficulty split 
asunder, and its secret laid bare; while the Irref- 
ragable, with all his logical tools, hews at it, and 
hovers round it, and finds it on all hands too hard 
for him. 

Again, in the difference between Oratory and 
Rhetoric, as indeed everywhere in that superiority 
of what is called the Natural over the Artificial, we 
find a similar illustration. The Orator persuades 
and carries all with him, he knows not how; the 
Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have per- 
suaded and carried all with him : the one is in a 
state of healthy unconsciousness, as if he *' had no 
system " ; the other, in virtue of regimen and die- 
tetic punctuality, feels at best that " his system is in 
high order." So stands it, in short, with all the 
forms of Intellect, whether as directed to the finding 
of truth, or to the fit imparting thereof ; to Poetry, 
to Eloquence, to depth of Insight, which is the basis 
of both these ; always the characteristic of right 
performance is a certain spontaneity, an uncon- 
sciousness ; " the healthy know not of their health, 
but only the sick." So that the old precept of the 
critic, as crabbed as it looked to his ambitious dis- 



1 88 Best English Essays 

ciple, might contain in it a most fundamental truth, 
applicable to us all, and in much else than Liter- 
ature: ''Whenever you have written any sentence 
that looks particularly excellent, be sure to blot it 
out." In like manner, under milder phraseology, 
and with a meaning purposely much wider, a living 
Thinker has taught us : " Of the Wrong we are 
always conscious, of the Right never." 

But if such is the law with regard to Speculation 
and the Intellectual power of man, much more is it 
with regard to Conduct, and the power, manifested 
chiefly therein, which we name Moral. '' Let not 
thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth " : 
whisper not to thy own heart. How worthy is this 
action ! — for then it is already becoming worthless. 
The good man is he who zuorks continually in well- 
doing; to whom well-doing is as his natural exist- 
ence, awakening no astonishment, requiring no 
commentary; but there, like a thing of course, and 
as if it could not but be so. Self-contemplation, on 
the other hand, is infallibly the symptom of disease, 
be it or be it not the sign of cure. An unhealthy 
Virtue is one that consumes itself to leanness in 
repenting and anxiety; or, still worse, that inflates 
itself into dropsical boastfulness and vainglory: 
either way, there is a self-seeking; an unprofitable 
looking behind us to measure the way we have 
made : whereas the sole concern is to walk continu- 
ally forward, and make more way. If in any sphere 
of man's Hfe, then in the Moral sphere, as the inmost 
and most vital of all, it is good that there be whole- 
ness ; that there be unconsciousness, which is the 
evidence of this. Let the free, reasonable Will, 
which dwells in us, as in our Holy of Holies, be 



Carlyle 189 

indeed free, and obeyed like a Divinity, as is its 
right and its effort : the perfect obedience will be the 
silent one. Such perhaps were the sense of that 
maxim, enunciating, as is usual, but the half of 
a truth : To say that we have a clear conscience, is 
to utter a solecism ; had we never sinned, we should 
have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, 
neither would victory be celebrated by songs of 
triumph. 

This, true enough, is an ideal, impossible state 
of being ; yet ever the goal towards which our actual 
state of being strives ; which it is the more perfect 
the nearer it can approach. Nor, in our actual 
world, where Labour must often prove ineffectual, 
and thus in all senses Light alternate with Darkness, 
and the nature of an ideal Morality be much modi- 
fied, is the case, thus far, materially different. It is 
a fact which escapes no one, that, generally speak- 
ing, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a 
little stock to cultivate acquaintance with. Above 
all, the public acknowledgment of such acquaint- 
ance, indicating that it has reached quite an intimate 
footing, bodes ill. Already, to the popular judg- 
ment, he who talks much about Virtue in the ab- 
stract, begins to be suspect ; it is shrewdly guessed 
that where there is great preaching, there will be 
little almsgiving. Or again, on a wider scale, we 
can remark that ages of Heroism are not ages of 
Moral Philosophy; Virtue, when it can be philoso- 
phised of, has become aware of itself, is sickly and 
beginning to decline. A spontaneous habitual all- 
pervading spirit of Chivalrous Valour shrinks to- 
gether, and perks itself up into shrivelled Points of 
Honour; humane Courtesy and Nobleness of mind 



190 Best English Essays 

dwindle into punctilious Politeness, '* avoiding 
meats " ; '* paying tithe of mint and anise, neglect- 
ing the weightier matters of the law." Goodness, 
which was a rule to itself, must now appeal to Pre- 
cept, and seek strength from Sanctions ; the Free- 
will no longer reigns unquestioned and by divine 
right, but like a mere earthly sovereign, by expe- 
diency, by Rewards and Punishments: or rather, 
let us say, the Freewill, so far as may be, has abdi- 
cated and withdrawn into the dark, and a spectral 
nightmare of a necessity usurps its throne ; for now 
that mysterious Self-impulse of the whole man, 
heaven-inspired, and in all senses partaking of the 
Infinite, being captiously questioned in a finite dia- 
lect, and answering, as it needs must, by silence, — 
is conceived as non-extant, and only the outward 
Mechanism of it remains acknowledged: of VoH- 
tion, except as the synonym of Desire, we hear 
nothing ; of ** Motives," without any Mover, more 
than enough. 

So too, when the generous Affections have be- 
come wellnigh paralytic, we have the reign of Sen- 
timentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at 
any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high 
feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity, 
love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness and all manner 
of godlike magnanimity, — are everywhere insisted 
on, and pressingly inculcated in speech and writing, 
in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim 
" Benevolence " to all the four winds, and have 
Truth engraved on their watch-seals : unhappily 
with little or no effect. Were the limbs in right 
walking order, why so much demonstrating of 
motion ? The barrenest of all mortals is the Senti- 



Carlyle 191 

mentalist. Granting even that he were sincere, and 
did not wilfully deceive us, or without first deceiv- 
ing himself, what good is in him? Does he not lie 
there as a perpetual lesson of despair, and type of 
bedrid valetudinarian impotence? His is emphat- 
ically a Virtue that has become, through every fibre, 
conscious of itself; it is all sick, and feels as if 
it were made of glass, and durst not touch or be 
touched; in the shape of work, it can do nothing; 
at the utmost, by incessant nursing and caudling, 
keep itself alive. As the last stage of all, when 
Virtue, properly so called, has ceased to be practised, 
and become extinct, and a mere remembrance, we 
have the era of Sophists, descanting of its existence, 
proving it, denying it, mechanically " accounting " 
for it; — as dissectors and demonstrators cannot 
operate till once the body be dead. 

Thus is true Moral genius, like true Intellectual, 
which indeed is but a lower phasis thereof, " ever a 
secret to itself." The healthy moral nature loves 
Goodness, and without wonder wholly lives in it : 
the unhealthy makes love to it, and would fain get 
to live in it; or, finding such courtship fruitless, 
turns round, and not without contempt abandons it. 
These curious relations of the Voluntary and Con- 
scious to the Involuntary and Unconscious, and the 
small proportion which, in all departments of our 
life, the former bears to the latter, — might lead 
us into deep questions of Psychology and Physi- 
ology : such, however, belong not to our present 
object. Enough, if the fact itself become apparent, 
that Nature so meant it with us; that in this wise 
we are made. We m.ay now say, that view man's 
individual Existence under what aspect we will, 



192 Best English Essays 

under the highest spiritual, as under the merely- 
animal aspect, everywhere the grand vital energy, 
while in its sound state, is an unseen unconscious 
one ; or, in the words of our old Aphorism, " the 
healthy know not of their health, but only the sick." 

To understand man, however, we must look be- 
yond the individual man and his actions or interests, 
and view him in combination with his fellows. It 
is in Society that man first feels what he is ; first 
becomes what he can be. In Society an altogether 
new set of spiritual activities are evolved in him, 
and the old immeasurably quickened and strength- 
ened. Society is the genial element wherein his 
nature first lives and grows ; the solitary man were 
but a small portion of himself, and must continue 
for ever folded in, stimted and only half alive. 
*' Already," says a deep Thinker, with more mean- 
ing than will disclose itself at once, *' my opinion, 
my conviction, gains infinitely in strength and sure- 
ness, the moment a second mind has adopted it." 
Such, even in its simplest form, is association ; so 
wondrous the communion of soul with soul as di- 
rected to the mere act of Knowing ! In other higher 
acts, the wonder is still more manifest ; as in that 
portion of our being which we name the Moral : 
for properly, indeed, all communion is of a moral 
sort, whereof such intellectual communion (in the 
act of knowing) is itself an example. But with 
regard to Morals strictly so called, it is in Society, 
we might almost say, that Morality begins ; here at 
least it takes an altogether new form, and on every 
side, as in living growth, expands itself. The 
Duties of Man to himself, to what is Highest in 



Carlyle 1 93 

himself, make but the First Table of the Law: to 
the First Table is now superadded a Second, with the 
Duties of Man to his Neighbour; whereby also 
the significance of the First now assumes its true 
importance. Man has joined himself with man; 
soul acts and reacts on soul; a mystic miraculous 
unfathomable Union establishes itself; Life, in all 
its elements, has become intensated, consecrated. 
The lightning-spark of Thought, generated, or say 
rather heaven-kindled, in the solitary mind, awakens 
its express likeness in another mind, in a thousand 
other minds, and all blaze up together in combined 
fire ; reverberated from mind to mind, fed also with 
fresh fuel in each, it acquires incalculable new light 
as Thought, incalculable new heat as converted into 
Action. By and by, a common store of Thought 
can accumulate, and be transmitted as an ever- 
lasting possession : Literature, whether as preserved 
in the memory of Bards, in Runes and Hieroglyphs 
engraved on stone, or in Books of written or printed 
paper, comes into existence, and begins to play its 
wondrous part. Polities are formed ; the weak sub- 
mitting to the strong ; with a willing loyalty, giving 
obedience that he may receive guidance : or say 
rather, in honour of our nature, the ignorant sub- 
mitting to the wise ; for so it is in all even the rudest 
communities, man never yields himself wholly to 
brute Force, but always to moral Greatness ; thus 
the universal title of respect, from the Oriental 
Sheik, from the Sachem of the Red Indians, down 
to our English Sir, implies only that he whom we 
mean to honour is our senior. Last, as the crown 
and all-supporting keystone of the fabric, Religion 
arises. The devout meditation of the isolated man, 

13 



194 Best English Essays 

which flitted through his soul, like a transient tone 
of Love and Awe from unknown lands, acquires 
certainty, continuance, when it is shared-in by his 
brother men. '' Where two or three are gathered 
together " in the name of the Highest, then first 
does the Highest, as it is written, *' appear among 
them to bless them " ; then first does an Altar and 
act of united Worship open a way from Earth to 
Heaven; whereon, were it but a simple Jacob's- 
ladder, the heavenly Messengers will travel, with 
glad tidings and unspeakable gifts for men. Such 
is Society, the vital articulation of many individ- 
uals into a new collective individual : greatly the 
most important of man's attainments on this earth; 
that in which, and by virtue of which, all his other 
attainments and attempts find their arena, and have 
their value. Considered well, Society is the stand- 
ing wonder of our existence; a true region of the 
Supernatural ; as it were, a second all-embracing 
Life, wherein our first individual Life becomes 
doubly and trebly alive, and whatever of Infinitude 
was in us bodies itself forth, and becomes visible 
and active. 

To figure Society as endowed with life is scarcely 
a metaphor; but rather the statement of a fact by 
such imperfect methods as language affords. Look 
at it closely, that mystic Union, Nature's highest 
work with man, wherein man's volition plays an 
indispensable yet so subordinate a part, and the 
small Mechanical grows so mysteriously and indis- 
solubly out of the infinite Dynamical, like Body out 
of Spirit, — is truly enough vital, what we can call 
vital, and bears the distinguishing character of life. 
In the same style also, we can say that Society has 



Carlyle 195 

its period of sickness and vigour, of youth, man- 
hood, decrepitude, dissolution and new birth; in 
one or other of which stages we may, in all times, 
and all places where men inhabit, discern it ; and 
do ourselves, in this time and place, whether as 
cooperating or as contending, as healthy members 
or as diseased ones, to our joy and sorrow, form 
part of it. The question. What is the actual condi- 
tion of Society ? has in these days unhappily become 
important enough. No one of us is unconcerned in 
that question ; but for the majority of thinking men 
a true answer to it, such is the state of matters, 
appears almost as the one thing needful. Mean- 
while, as the true answer, that is to say, the complete 
and fundamental answer and settlement, often as it 
has been demanded, is nowhere forthcoming, and 
indeed by its nature is impossible, any honest ap- 
proximation towards such is not without value. 
The feeblest light, or even so much as a more pre- 
cise recognition of the darkness, which is the first 
step to attainment of light, will be welcome. 

This once understood, let it not seem idle if we 
remark that here too our old Aphorism holds ; that 
again in the Body Politic, as in the animal body, 
the sign of right performance is Unconsciousness. 
Such indeed is virtually the meaning of that phrase, 
** artificial state of society," as contrasted with the 
natural state, and indicating something so inferior 
to it. For, in all vital things, men distinguish an 
Artificial and a Natural ; founding on some dim 
perception or sentiment of the very truth we here 
insist on : the artificial is the conscious, mechanical ; 
the natural is the unconscious, dynamical. Thus, 
as we have an artificial Poetry, and prize only the 



196 Best English Essays 

natural ; so likewise we have an artificial Morality, 
an artificial Wisdom, an artificial Society. The 
artificial Society is precisely one that knows its 
own structure, its own internal functions; not in 
watching, not in knowing which, but in working 
outwardly to the fulfilment of its aim, does the well- 
being of a Society consist. Every Society, every 
Polity, has a spiritual principle ; is the embodiment, 
tentative and more or less complete, of an Idea: 
all its tendencies of endeavour, specialties of custom, 
its laws, politics and whole procedure (as the glance 
of some Montesquieu, across innumerable super- 
ficial entanglements, can partly decipher), are pre- 
scribed by an Idea, and flow naturally from it, as 
movements from the living source of motion. This 
Idea, be it of devotion to a man or class of men, to 
a creed, to an institution, or even, as in more ancient 
times, to a piece of land, is ever a true Loyalty ; 
has in it something of a religious, paramount, quite 
infinite character; it is properly the Soul of the 
State, its Life; mysterious as other forms of Life, 
and Hke these working secretly, and in a depth 
beyond that of consciousness. 

Accordingly, it is not in the vigorous ages of 
a Roman Republic that Treatises of the Common- 
wealth are written : while the Decii are rushing with 
devoted bodies on the enemies of Rome, what need 
of preaching Patriotism ? The virtue of Patriotism 
has already sunk from its pristine all-transcendent 
condition, before it has received a name. So long 
as the Commonwealth continues rightly athletic, 
it cares not to dabble in anatomy. Why teach 
obedience to the Sovereign; why so much as ad- 
mire it, or separately recognise it, while a divine 



Carlyle 197 

idea of Obedience perennially inspires all men? 
Loyalty, like Patriotism, of which it is a form, was 
not praised till it had begun to decline; the Preux 
Chevaliers first became rightly admirable, when 
'' dying for their king " had ceased to be a habit 
with chevaliers. For if the mystic significance of 
the State, let this be what it may, dwells vitally in 
every heart, encircles every life as with a second 
higher life, how should it stand self-questioning? 
It must rush outward, and express itself by works. 
Besides, if perfect, it is there as by necessity, and 
does not excite inquiry : it is also by nature infinite, 
has no limits ; therefore can be circumscribed by no 
conditions and definitions ; cannot be reasoned of ; 
except musically, or in the language of Poetry, 
cannot yet so much as be spoken of. 

In those days, Society was what we name healthy, 
sound at heart. Not indeed without suffering 
enough ; not without perplexities, difficulty on every 
side : for such is the appointment of man ; his 
highest and sole blessedness is, that he toil, and 
know what to toil at : not in ease, but in united vic- 
torious labour, which is at once evil and the victory 
over evil, does his Freedom lie. Nay often, looking 
no deeper than such superficial perplexities of the 
early Time, historians have taught us that it was 
all one mass of contradiction and disease; and in 
the antique Republic or feudal Monarchy have seen 
only the confused chaotic quarry, not the robust 
labourer, or the stately edifice he was building of it. 

If Society, in such ages, had its difficulty, it had 
also its strength; if sorrowful masses of rubbish 
so encumbered it, the tough sinews to hurl them 
aside, with indomitable heart, were not wanting. 



198 Best English Essays 

Society went along without complaint; did not 
stop to scrutinise itself, to say, How well I perform ! 
or, Alas, how ill! Men did not yet feel themselves 
to be " the envy of surrounding nations " ; and were 
enviable on that very account. Society was what 
we can call whole, in both senses of the word. The 
individual man was in himself a whole, or com- 
plete union; and could combine with his fellows 
as the living member of a greater whole. For all 
men, through their life, were animated by one great 
Idea; thus all efforts pointed one way, everywhere 
there was zvholeness. Opinion and Action had not 
yet become disunited; but the former could still 
produce the latter, or attempt to produce it ; as the 
stamp does its impression while the wax is not 
hardened. Thought and the voice of thought were 
also a unison ; thus, instead of Speculation, we had 
Poetry; Literature, in its rude utterance, was as 
yet a heroic Song, perhaps too a devotional Anthem. 
Religion was everywhere; Philosophy lay hid 
under it, peaceably included in it. Herein, as in 
the life-centre of all, lay the true health and one- 
ness. Only at a later era must Religion split itself 
into Philosophies ; and thereby, the vital union of 
Thought being lost, disunion and mutual collision 
in all provinces of Speech and Action more and 
more prevail. For if the Poet, or Priest, or by 
whatever title the inspired thinker may be named, 
is the sign of vigour and well-being ; so likewise is 
the Logician, or uninspired thinker, the sign of 
disease, probably of decrepitude and decay. Thus, 
not to mention other instances, one of them much 
nearer-hand, — so soon as Prophecy among the 
Hebrews had ceased, then did the reign of Argu- 



Carlyle 199 

mentation begin ; and the ancient Theocracy, in its 
Sadduceeisms and Phariseeisms, and vain jangling 
of sects and doctors, give token that the soul of it 
had fled, and that the body itself, by natural dis- 
solution, " with the old forces still at work, but 
working in reverse order," was on the road to final 
disappearance. 

We might pursue this question into innumerable 
other ramifications ; and everywhere, under new 
shapes, find the same truth, which we here so im- 
perfectly enunciate, disclosed; that throughout the 
whole world of man, in all manifestations and per- 
formances of his nature, outward and inward, per- 
sonal and social, the Perfect, the Great is a mystery 
to itself, knows not itself; whatsoever does know 
itself is already little, and more or less imperfect. 
Or otherwise, we may say, Unconsciousness belongs 
to pure unmixed life; Consciousness to a diseased 
mixture and conflict of life and death : Uncon- 
sciousness is the sign of creation ; Consciousness, 
at best, that of manufacture. So deep, in this exist- 
ence of ours, is the significance of Mystery. Well 
might the Ancients make Silence a god ; for it is 
the element of all godhood, infinitude, or transcen- 
dental greatness; at once the source and the ocean 
wherein all such begins and ends. In the same 
sense, too, have Poets sung ' Hymns to the Night " ; 
as if Night were nobler than Day; as if Day 
were but a small motley-coloured veil spread tran- 
siently over the infinite bosom of Night, and did 
but deform and hide from us its purely transparent 
eternal deeps. So likewise have they spoken and 
sung as if Silence were the grand epitome and com- 



*2oo Best English Essays 

plete sum-total of all Harmony; and Death, what 
mortals call Death, properly the beginning of Life. 
Under such figures, since except in figures there is 
no speaking of the Invisible, have men endeavoured 
to express a great Truth ; — a Truth, in our Times, 
as nearly as is perhaps possible, forgotten by the 
most; which nevertheless continues forever true, 
forever all-important, and will one day, under new 
figures, be again brought home to the bosoms of all. 
But indeed, in a far lower sense, the rudest mind 
has still some intimation of the greatness there is 
in Mystery. If Silence was made a god of by 
the Ancients, he still continues a government-clerk 
among us Moderns. To all quacks, moreover, of 
what sort soever, the effect of Mystery is well 
known: here and there some Cagliostro, even in 
latter days, turns it to notable account: the block- 
head also, who is ambitious, and has no talent, finds 
sometimes in " the talent of silence," a kind of sue- 
cedaneum. Or again, looking on the opposite side 
of the matter, do we not see, in the common under- 
standing of mankind, a certain distrust, a certain 
contempt of what is altogether self-conscious and 
mechanical ? As nothing that is wholly seen through 
has other than a trivial character ; so anything pro- 
fessing to be great, and yet wholly to see through 
itself, is already known to be false, and a failure. 
The evil repute your " theoretical men " stand in, 
the acknowledged inefficiency of " paper consti- 
tutions," and all that class of objects, are instances 
of this. Experience often repeated, and perhaps 
a certain instinct of something far deeper that lies 
under such experiences, has taught men so much. 
They know beforehand, that the loud is generally 



Carlyle 201 

the insignificant, the empty. Whatsoever can pro- 
claim itself from the house-tops may be fit for the 
hawker, and for those multitudes that must needs 
buy of him; but for any deeper use, might as 
well continue unproclaimed. Observe too, how the 
converse of the proposition holds; how the insig- 
nificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and, after 
the manner of a drum, is loud even because of its 
emptiness. The uses of some Patent Dinner Cale- 
factor can be bruited abroad over the whole world 
in the course of the first winter ; those of the Print- 
ing Press are not so well seen into for the first three 
centuries : the passing of the Select- Vestries Bill 
raises more noise and hopeful expectancy among 
mankind than did the promulgation of the Christian 
Religion. Again, and again, we say, the great, the 
creative and enduring is ever a secret to itself ; only 
the small, the barren and transient is otherwise. 

If we now, with a practical medical view, exam- 
ine, by this same test of Unconsciousness, the Con- 
dition of our own Era, and of man's Life therein, 
the diagnosis we arrive at is nowise of a flattering 
sort. The state of Society in our days is, of all 
possible states, the least an unconscious one: this 
is specially the Era when all manner of Inquiries 
into what was once the unfelt, involuntary sphere 
of man's existence, find their place, and, as it were, 
occupy the whole domain of thought. What, for 
example, is all this that we hear, for the last gen- 
eration or two, about the Improvement of the Age, 
the Spirit of the Age, Destruction of Prejudice, 
Progress of the Species, and the March of Intellect, 
but an unhealthy state of self-sentience, self-survey ; 



ao^ Best English Essays 

the precursor and prognostic of still worse health? 
That Intellect do march, if possible at double-quick 
time, is very desirable; nevertheless, why should 
she turn round at every stride, and cry: See you 
what a stride I have taken! Such a marching of 
Intellect is distinctly of the spavined kind ; what the 
Jockeys call " all action and no go." Or at best, if 
we examine well, it is the marching of that gouty 
Patient, whom his Doctors had clapt on a metal floor 
artificially heated to the searing point, so that he was 
obliged to march, and did march with a vengeance 
— nowhither. Intellect did not awaken for the first 
time yesterday; but has been under way from 
Noah's Flood downwards : greatly her best prog- 
ress, moreover, was in the old times, when she said 
nothing about it. In those same " dark ages," Intel- 
lect (metaphorically as well as literally) could in- 
vent glass, which now she has enough ado to grind 
into spectacles. Intellect built not only Churches, 
but a Church, the Church, based on this firm Earth, 
yet reaching up, and leading up, as high as Heaven ; 
and now it is all she can do to keep its doors bolted, 
that there be no tearing of the Surplices, no robbery 
of the Alms-box. She built a Senate-house likewise, 
glorious in its kind; and now it costs her a well- 
nigh mortal effort to sweep it clear of vermin, and 
get the roof made rain-tight. 

But the truth is, with Intellect, as with most other 
things, we are now passing from that first or boast- 
ful stage of Self-sentience into the second or painful 
one : out of these often-asseverated declarations that 
" our system is in high order," we come now, by 
natural sequence, to the melancholy conviction that 
it is altogether the reverse. Thus, for instance, 



Carlyle 203 

in the matter of Government, the period of the 
^' Invaluable Constitution " has to be followed by a 
Reform Bill ; to laudatory De Lolmes succeed ob- 
jurgatory Benthams. At any rate, what Treatises 
on the Social Contract, on the Elective Franchise, 
the Rights of Man, the Rights of Property, Codi- 
fications, Institutions, Constitutions, have we not, 
for long years, groaned under! Or again, with 
a wider survey, consider those Essays on Man, 
Thoughts on Man, Inquiries concerning Man ; not 
to mention Evidences of the Christian Faith, 
Theories of Poetry, Considerations on the Origin 
of Evil, which during the last century have accumu- 
lated on us to a frightful extent. Never since the 
beginning of Time was there, that we hear or read 
of, so intensely self-conscious a Society. Our whole 
relations to the Universe and to our fellow-man 
have become an Inquiry, a Doubt; nothing will 
go on of its own accord, and do its function quietly ; 
but all things must be probed into, the whole work- 
ing of man's world be anatomically studied. Alas, 
anatomically studied, that it may be medically aided ! 
Till at length indeed, we have come to such a pass, 
that except in this same medicine, with its artifices 
and appliances, few can so much as imagine any 
strength or hope to remain for us. The whole Life 
of Society must now be carried on by drugs : doctor 
after doctor appears with his nostrum, of Cooper- 
ative Societies, Universal Suffrage, Cottage-and- 
cow systems. Repression of Population, Vote by 
Ballot. To such height has the dyspepsia of Society 
reached; as indeed the constant grinding internal 
pain, or from time to time the mad spasmodic throes, 
of all Society do otherwise too mournfully indicate. 



204 Best English Essays 

Far be it from us to attribute, as some unwise 
persons do, the disease itself to this unhappy sen- 
sation that there is a disease! The Encyclopedists 
did not produce the troubles of France; but the 
troubles of France produced the Encyclopedists, 
and much else. The Self-consciousness is the symp- 
tom merely ; nay, it is also the attempt towards cure. 
We record the fact, without special censure; not 
wondering that Society should feel itself, and in all 
ways complain of aches and twinges, for it has 
suffered enough. Napoleon was but a Job's-com- 
forter, when he told his wounded Staff-officer, twice 
unhorsed by cannon-balls, and with half his limbs 
blown to pieces : " Vous vous ecoutez trop ! " 

On the outward, as it were Physical diseases of 
Society, it were beside our purpose to insist here. 
These are diseases which he who runs may read; 
and sorrow over, with or without hope. Wealth 
has accumulated itself into masses ; and Poverty, 
also in accumulation enough, lies impassably sep- 
arated from it; opposed, uncommunicating, like 
forces in positive and negative poles. The gods 
of this lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones, 
less happy than Epicurus's gods, but as indolent, 
as impotent; while the boundless living chaos of 
Ignorance and Hunger welters terrific, in its dark 
fury, under their feet. How much among us might 
be likened to a whited sepulchre; outwardly all 
pomp and strength ; but inwardly full of horror and 
despair and dead-men's bones! Iron highways, 
with their wains fire-winged, are uniting all ends of 
the firm Land; quays and moles, with their innu- 
merable stately fleets, tame the Ocean into our pliant 
bearer of burdens ; Labour's thousand arms, of sinew 



Carlyle 205 

and of metal, all-conquering everywhere, from the 
tops of the mountain down to the depths of the mine 
and the caverns of the sea, ply unweariedly for the 
service of man : yet man remains unserved. He has 
subdued this Planet, his habitation and inheritance ; 
yet reaps no profit from the victory. 

Sad to look upon : in the highest stage of civili- 
sation, nine tenths of mankind have to struggle in 
the lowest battle of savage or even animal man, the 
battle against Famine. Countries are rich, pros- 
perous in all manner of increase, beyond example: 
but the Men of those countries are poor, needier 
than ever of all sustenance outward and inward ; 
of Belief, of Knowledge, of Money, of Food. The 
rule. Sic vos non vohis, never altogether to be got 
rid of in men's Industry, now presses with such 
incubus weight, that Industry must shake it off, or 
utterly be strangled under it; and, alas, can as 
yet but gasp and rave, and aimlessly struggle, like 
one in the final deliration. Thus Change, or the 
inevitable approach of Change, is manifest every- 
where. In one Country we have seen lava-torrents 
of fever-frenzy envelop all things ; Government 
succeed Government, like the phantasms of a dying 
brain. In another Country, we can even now see, 
in maddest alternation, the Peasant governed by such 
guidance as this : To labour earnestly one month in 
raising wheat, and the next month labour earnestly 
in burning it. So that Society, were it not by nature 
immortal, and its death ever a new-birth, might 
appear, as it does in the eyes of some, to be sick to 
dissolution, and even now writhing in its last agony. 
Sick enough we must admit it to be, with disease 
enough, a whole nosology of diseases ; wherein he 



2o6 Best English Essays 

perhaps is happiest that is not called to prescribe 
as physician ; — wherein, however, one small piece 
of policy, that of summoning the Wisest in the 
Commonwealth, by the sole method yet known or 
thought of, to come together and with their whole 
soul consult for it, might, but for late tedious ex- 
periences, have seemed unquestionable enough. 

But leaving this, let us rather look within, into 
the Spiritual condition of Society, and see what 
aspects and prospects offer themselves there. For 
after all, it is there properly that the secret and 
origin of the whole is to be sought: the Physical 
derangements of Society are but the image and 
impress of its Spiritual; while the heart continues 
sound, all other sickness is superficial, and tem- 
porary. False Action is the fruit of false Specu- 
lation; let the spirit of Society be free and strong, 
that is to say, let true Principles inspire the members 
of Society, then neither can disorders accumulate 
in its Practice; each disorder will be promptly, 
faithfully inquired into, and remedied as it arises. 
But alas, with us the Spiritual condition of Soci- 
ety is no less sickly than the Physical. Examine 
man's internal world, in any of its social relations 
and performances, here too all seems diseased self- 
consciousness, collision and mutually-destructive 
struggle. Nothing acts from within outwards in 
undivided healthy force; everything lies impotent, 
lamed, its force turned inwards, and painfully 
*' listens to itself." 

To begin with our highest Spiritual function, 
with Religion, we might ask. Whither has Religion 
now fled? Of Churches and their establishments 
we here say nothing; nor of the unhappy domains 



Carlyle 207 

of Unbelief, and how innumerable men, blinded 
in their minds, have grown to " live without God 
in the world " ; but, taking the fairest side of the 
matter, we ask, What is the nature of that same 
Religion, which still lingers in the hearts of the 
few who are called, and call themselves, specially 
the Religious? Is it a healthy religion, vital, un- 
conscious of itself; that shines forth spontaneously 
in doing of the Work, or even in preaching of the 
Word? Unhappily, no. Instead of heroic martyr 
Conduct, and inspired and soul-inspiring Eloquence, 
whereby Religion itself were brought home to our 
living bosoms, to live and reign there, we have 
** Discourses on the Evidences," endeavouring, with 
smallest result, to make it probable that such a 
thing as Religion exists. The most enthusiastic 
Evangelicals do not preach a Gospel, but keep 
describing how it should and might be preached: 
to awaken the sacred fire of faith, as by a sacred 
contagion, is not their endeavour; but, at most, to 
describe how Faith shows and acts, and scientifically 
distinguish true Faith from false. Religion, like 
all else, is conscious of itself, hstens to itself; it be- 
comes less and less creative, vital; more and more 
mechanical. Considered as a whole, the Christian 
Religion of late ages has been continually dissi- 
pating itself into Metaphysics; and threatens now 
to disappear, as some rivers do, in deserts of barren 
sand. 

Of Literature, and its deep-seated, wide-spread 
maladies, why speak ? Literature is but a branch of 
Religion, and always participates in its character: 
however, in our time, it is the only branch that still 
shows any greenness ; and, as some think, must one 



2o8 Best English Essays 

day become the main stem. Now, apart from the 
subterranean and tartarean regions of Literature; 
— leaving out of view the frightful, scandalous 
statistics of Puffing, the mystery of Slander, False- 
hood, Hatred and other convulsion-work of rabid 
Imbecility, and all that has rendered Literature on 
that side a perfect " Babylon the mother of Abomi- 
nations," in very deed making the world '' drunk " 
with the wine of her iniquity ; — forgetting all 
this, let us look only to the regions of the upper 
air; to such Literature as can be said to have some 
attempt towards truth in it, some tone of music, 
and if it be not poetical, to hold of the poetical. 
Among other characteristics, is not this manifest 
enough: that it knows itself? Spontaneous de- 
votedness to the object, being wholly possessed 
by the object, what we can call Inspiration, has 
well-nigh ceased to appear in Literature. Which 
melodious Singer forgets that he is singing melo- 
diously? We have not the love of greatness, but 
the love of the love of greatness. Hence infinite 
Affectations, Distractions; in every case inevitable 
Error. Consider, for one example, this peculiarity 
of Modern Literature, the sin that has been named 
View-hunting. In our elder writers, there are no 
paintings of scenery for its own sake ; no euphuistic 
gallantries with Nature, but a constant heartlove for 
her, a constant dwelling in communion with her. 
View-hunting, with so much else that is of kin to 
it, first came decisively into action through the 
** Sorrows o^ Werter " ; which wonderful Perform- 
ance, indeed, may in many senses be regarded as the 
progenitor of all that has since become popular in 
Literature; whereof, in so far as concerns spirit 



Carlyle 209 

and tendency, it still offers the most instructive 
image; for nowhere, except in its own country, 
above all in the mind of its illustrious Author, has 
it yet fallen wholly obsolete. Scarcely ever, till 
that late epoch, did any worshipper of Nature 
become entirely aware that he was worshipping, 
much to his own credit; and think of saying to 
himself: Come, let us make a description! Intol- 
erable enough : when every puny whipster plucks 
out his pencil, and insists on painting you a scene; 
so that the instant you discern such a thing as 
" wavy outline," " mirror of the lake," " stem head- 
land," or the like, in any Book, you tremulously 
hasten on; and scarcely the Author of Waverley 
himself can tempt you not to skip. 

Nay, is not the diseased self-conscious state of 
Literature disclosed in this one fact, which lies so 
near us here, the prevalence of Reviewing ! Sterne's 
wish for a reader " that would give-up the reins of 
his imagination into his author's hands, and be 
pleased he knew not why, and cared not wherefore," 
might lead him a long journey now. Indeed, for 
our best class of readers, the chief pleasure, a very 
stinted one, is this same knowing of the Why; 
which many a Kames and Bossu has been, ineffect- 
ually enough, endeavouring to teach us : till at last 
these also have laid down their trade; and now 
your Reviewer is a mere taster; who tastes, and 
says, by the evidence of such palate, such tongue, 
as he has got. It is good. It is bad. Was it thus 
that the French carried out certain inferior creatures 
on their Algerine Expedition, to taste the wells for 
them, and try whether they were poisoned? Far 
be it from us to disparage our own craft, whereby 

14 



2IO Best English Essays 

we have our living! Only v^e must note these 
things: that Reviewing spreads with strange 
vigour; that such a man as Byron reckons the Re- 
viewer and the Poet equal ; that at the last Leipzig 
Fair, there was advertised a Review of Reviews. 
By and by it will be found that all Literature has 
become one boundless self-devouring Review ; and, 
as in London routs, we have to do nothing, but only 
to see others do nothing. — Thus does Literature 
also, like a sick thing, superabundantly " listen to 
itself.^' 

No less is this unhealthy symptom manifest, if 
we cast a glance on our Philosophy, on the character 
of our speculative Thinking. Nay already, as above 
hinted, the mere existence and necessity of a Phi- 
losophy is an evil. Man is sent hither not to ques- 
tion, but to work : " the end of man," it was long 
ago written, " is an Action, not a Thought." In 
the perfect state, all Thought were but the picture 
and inspiring symbol of Action ; Philosophy, except 
as Poetry and Religion, would have no being. And 
yet how, in this imperfect state, can it be avoided, 
can it be dispensed with? Man stands as in the 
centre of Nature; his fraction of Time encircled 
by Eternity, his handbreadth of Space encircled by 
Infinitude: how shall he forbear asking himself, 
What am I; and Whence; and Whither? How 
too, except in slight partial hints, in kind assever- 
ations and assurances, such as a mother quiets her 
fretfully inquisitive child with, shall he get answer 
to such inquiries? 

The disease of Metaphysics, accordingly, is a 
perennial one. In all ages, those questions of Death 
and Immortality, Origin of Evil, Freedom and 



Carlyle 211 

Necessity, must, under new forms, anew make their 
appearance; ever, from time to time, must the 
attempt to shape for ourselves some Theorem of 
the Universe be repeated. And ever unsuccessfully : 
for what Theorem of the Infinite can the Finite 
render complete? We, the whole species of Man- 
kind, and our whole existence and history, are but 
a floating speck in the illimitable ocean of the All; 
yet in that ocean; indissoluble portion thereof; 
partaking of its infinite tendencies : borne this way 
and that by its deep-swelling tides, and grand ocean 
currents ; — of which what faintest chance is there 
that we should ever exhaust the significance, ascer- 
tain the goings and comings? A region of Doubt, 
therefore, hovers for ever in the background; in 
Action alone can we have certainty. Nay properly 
Doubt is the indispensable inexhaustible material 
whereon Action works, which Action has to fashion 
into Certainty and Reality ; only on a canvas of 
Darkness, such is man's way of being, could the 
many-colored picture of our Life paint itself and 
shine. 

Thus if our eldest system of Metaphysics is as 
old as the " Book of Genesis," our latest is that of 
Mr. Thomas Hope, published only within the cur- 
rent year. It is a chronic malady that of Meta- 
physics, as we said, and perpetually recurs on us. 
At the utmost, there is a better and a worse in it; 
a stage of convalescence, and a stage of relapse with 
new sickness : these for ever succeed each other, 
as is the nature of all Life-movement here below. 
The first, or convalescent stage, we might also name 
that of Dogmatical or Constructive Metaphysics; 
when the mind constructively endeavours to scheme 



212 Best English Essays 

out and assert for itself an actual Theorem of the 
Universe, and therewith for a time rests satisfied. 
The second or sick stage might be called that of 
Skeptical or Inquisitory Metaphysics; when the 
mind having widened its sphere of vision, the exist- 
ing Theorem of the Universe no longer answers the 
phenomena, no longer yields contentment ; but must 
be torn in pieces, and certainty anew sought for 
in the endless realms of denial. All Theologies and 
sacred Cosmogonies belong, in some measure, to the 
first class ; in all Pyrrhonism, from Pyrrho down to 
Hume and the innumerable disciples of Hume, we 
have instances enough of the second. In the former, 
so far as it affords satisfaction, a temporary anodyne 
to doubt, an arena for wholesome action, there may 
be much good; indeed in this case, it holds rather 
of Poetry than of Metaphysics, might be called 
Inspiration rather than Speculation. The latter is 
Metaphysics proper ; a pure, unmixed, though from 
time to time a necessary evil. 

For truly, if we look into it, there is no more 
fruitless endeavour than this same, which the Meta- 
physician proper toils in: to educe Conviction out 
of Negation. How, by merely testing and rejecting 
v^hat is not, shall we ever attain knowledge of what 
is ? Metaphysical Speculation, as it begins in No or 
Nothingness, so it must needs end in Nothingness; 
circulates and must circulate in endless vortices; 
creating, swallowing — itself. Our being is made 
up of Light and Darkness, the Light resting on the 
Darkness, and balancing it; everywhere there is 
Dualism, Equipoise; a perpetual Contradiction 
dwells in us : " where shall I place myself to escape 
from my own shadow?" Consider it well, Meta- 



Carlyle , 213 

physics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the 
mind ; to environ and shut in, or as we say, compre- 
hend the mind. Hopeless struggle, for the wisest, 
as for the foolishest! What strength of sinew, or 
athletic skill, will enable the stoutest athlete to fold 
his own body in his arms, and, by lifting, lift up 
himself f The Irish Saint swam the Channel, 
" carrying his head in his teeth " ; but the feat has 
never been imitated. 

That this is the age of Metaphysics, in the proper, 
or sceptical Inquisitory sense; that there was a 
necessity for its being such an age, we regard 
as our indubitable misfortune. From many causes, 
the arena of free Activity has long been narrow- 
ing, that of sceptical Inquiry becoming more and 
more universal, more and more perplexing. The 
Thought conducts not to the Deed; but in bound- 
less chaos, self-devouring, engenders monstrosi- 
ties, phantasms, fire-breathing chimeras. Profitable 
Speculation were this : What is to be done ; and 
How is it to be done ? But with us not so much as 
the What can be got sight of. For some gener- 
ations, all Philosophy has been a painful, captious, 
hostile question towards everything in the Heaven 
above, and in the Earth beneath: Why art thou 
there? Till at length it has come to pass that the 
worth and authenticity of all things seems dubitable 
or deniable : our best effort must be unproductively 
spent not in working, but in ascertaining our mere 
Whereabout, and so much as whether we are to 
work at all. Doubt, which, as was said, ever hangs 
in the background of our world, has now become 
our middleground and foreground; whereon, for 
the time, no fair Life-picture can be painted, but 



214 ^^st English Essays 

only the dark air-canvas itself flow round us, be- 
wildering and benighting-. 

Nevertheless, doubt as we will, man is actually 
Here ; not to ask questions, but to do work : in this 
time, as in all times, it must be the heaviest evil 
for him, if his faculty of Action lie dormant, and 
only that of sceptical Inquiry exert itself. Accord- 
ingly, whoever looks abroad upon the world, com- 
paring the Past with the Present, may find that the 
practical condition of man in these days is one of 
the saddest; burdened with miseries which are in 
a considerable degree pecuHar. In no time was 
man's life what he calls a happy one ; in no time can 
it be so. A perpetual dream there has been of 
Paradises, and some luxurious Lubberland, where 
the brooks should run wine, and the trees bend with 
ready-baked viands; but it was a dream merely; 
an impossible dream. Suffering, contradiction, 
error, have their quite perennial, and even indis- 
pensable abode in this Earth. Is not labour the in- 
heritance of man ? And what labour for the present 
is joyous, and not grievous? Labour, effort, is the 
very interruption of that ease, which man foolishly 
enough fancies to be his happiness ; and yet without 
labour there were no ease, no rest, so much as con- 
ceivable. Thus Evil, what we call Evil, must ever 
exist while man exists : Evil, in the widest sense 
we can give it, is precisely the dark, disordered ma- 
terial out of which man's Freewill has to create an 
edifice of order and Good. Ever must Pain urge us 
to Labour ; and only in free Effort can any blessed- 
ness be imagined for us. 

But if man has, in all ages, had enough to en- 
counter, there has, in most civilised ages, been an 



Carlyle 215 

inward force vouchsafed him, whereby the pressure 
of things outward might be withstood. Obstruction 
abounded; but Faith also was not wanting. It is 
by Faith that man removes mountains : while he 
had Faith, his limbs might be wearied with toiling, 
his back galled with bearing; but the heart within 
him was peaceable and resolved. In the thickest 
gloom there burnt a lamp to guide him. If he 
struggled and suffered, he felt that it even should 
be so; knew for what he was suffering and strug- 
gling. Faith gave him an inward Willingness ; a 
world of Strength wherewith to front a world of 
Difficulty. The true wretchedness lies here: that 
the Difficulty remain and the Strength be lost ; that 
Pain cannot relieve itself in free Effort; that we 
have the Labour, and want the Willingness. Faith 
Strengthens us, enlightens us, for all endeavours and 
endurances; with Faith we can do all, and dare 
all, and life itself has a thousand times been joy- 
fully given away. But the sum of man's misery is 
even this, that he feel himself crushed under the 
Juggernaut wheels, and know that Juggernaut is 
no divinity, but a dead mechanical idol. 

Now this is specially the misery which has fallen 
on man in our Era. Belief, Faith has wellnigh 
vanished from the world. The youth on awaken- 
ing in this wondrous Universe no longer finds a 
competent theory of its wonders. Time was, when 
if he asked himself. What is man. What are the 
duties of man? the answer stood ready written for 
him. But now the ancient " ground-plan of the 
All " belies itself when brought into contact with 
reality; Mother Church has, to the most, become 
a superannuated Step-mother, whose lessons go 



2i6 Best English Essays 

disregarded; or are spurned at, and scornfully 
gainsaid. For young Valour and thirst of Action no 
ideal Chivalry invites to heroism, prescribes what 
is heroic: the old ideal of Manhood has grown 
obsolete, and the new is still invisible to us, and 
we grope after it in darkness, one clutching this 
phantom, another that ; Werterism, Byronism, even 
Brummelism, each has its day. For Contemplation 
and love of Wisdom, no Cloister now opens its 
religious shades; the Thinker must, in all senses, 
wander homeless, too often aimless, looking up 
to a Heaven which is dead for him, round to an 
Earth which is deaf. Action, in those old days, 
was easy, was voluntary, for the divine worth of 
human things lay acknowledged; Speculation was 
wholesome, for it ranged itself as the handmaid of 
Action; what could not so range itself died out 
by its natural death, by neglect. Loyalty still hal- 
lowed obedience, and made rule noble; there was 
still something to be loyal to: the Godlike stood 
embodied under many a symbol in men's interests 
and business; the Finite shadowed forth the In- 
finite; Eternity looked through Time. The Life 
of man was encompassed and overcanopied by a 
glory of Heaven, even as his dwelling-place by 
the azure vault. 

How changed in these new days! Truly may it 
be said, the Divinity has withdrawn from the Earth ; 
or veils himself in that wide-wasting Whirlwind 
of a departing Era, wherein the fewest can discern 
his goings. Not Godhead, but an iron, ignoble 
circle of Necessity embraces all things ; binds the 
youth of these times into a sluggish thrall, or else 
exasperates him into a rebel. Heroic Action is 



Carlyle 217 

paralysed; for what worth now remains unques- 
tionable with him? At the fervid period when his 
whole nature cries aloud for Action, there is nothing 
sacred under whose banner he can act; the course 
and kind and conditions of free Action are all but 
undiscoverable. Doubt storms-in on him through 
every avenue; inquiries of the deepest, painfulest 
sort must be engaged with; and the invincible 
energy of young years waste itself in sceptical, 
suicidal cavillings ; in passionate " questionings of 
Destiny," whereto no answer will be returned. 

For men, in whom the old perennial principle of 
Hunger (be it Hunger of the poor Day-drudge who 
stills it with eighteenpence a-day, or of the am- 
bitious Placehunter who can nowise still it with so 
little) suffices to fill-up existence, the case is bad; 
but not the worst. These men have an aim, such 
as it is; and can steer towards it, with chagrin 
enough truly; yet, as their hands are kept full, 
without desperation. Unhappier are they to whom 
a higher instinct has been given ; who struggle 
to be persons, not machine's ; to whom the Universe 
is not a warehouse, or at best a fancy-bazaar, but 
a mystic temple and hall of doom. For such men 
there lie properly two courses open. The lower, 
yet still an estimable class, take up with worn- 
out Symbols of the Godlike; keep trimming and 
trucking between these and Hypocrisy, purblindly 
enough, miserably enough. A numerous interme- 
diate class end in Denial; and form a theory that 
there is no theory; that nothing is certain in the 
world, except this fact of Pleasure being pleasant; 
so they try to realise what trifling modicum of 
Pleasure they can come at, and to live contented 



21 8 Best English Essays 

therewith, winking hard. Of these we speak not 
here ; but only of the second nobler class, who also 
have dared to say No, and cannot yet say Yea; 
but feel that in the No they dwell as in a Golgotha, 
where life enters not, where peace is not appointed 
them. 

Hard, for most part, is the fate of such men ; the 
harder the nobler they are. In dim forecastings, 
wrestles within them the " Divine Idea of the 
World," yet will nowhere visibly reveal itself. They 
have to realise a Worship for themselves, or live 
unworshipping. The Godlike has vanished from 
the world; and they, by the strong cry of their 
soul's agony, like true wonder-workers, must again 
evoke its presence. This miracle is their appointed 
task; which they must accomplish, or die wretch- 
edly: this miracle has been accomplished by such; 
but not in our land ; our land yet knows not of it. 
Behold a Byron, in melodious tones, " cursing his 
day " : he mistakes earthborn passionate Desire for 
heaven-inspired Freewill; without heavenly load- 
star, rushes madly into the dance of meteoric lights 
that hover on the mad Mahlstrom ; and goes down 
among its eddies. Hear a Shelley filling the earth 
with inarticulate wail : like the infinite, inarticulate 
grief and weeping of forsaken infants. A noble 
Friedrich Schlegel, stupefied in that fearful loneli- 
ness, as of a silenced battle-field, flies back to 
Catholicism; as a child might to its slain mother's 
bosom, and cling there. In lower regions, how 
many a poor Hazlitt must wander on God's verdant 
earth, like the Unblest on burning deserts ; passion- 
ately dig wells, and draw up only the dry quicksand ; 
believe that he is seeking Truth, yet only wrestle 



Carlyle 219 

among endless Sophisms, doing- desperate battle as 
with spectre-hosts ; and die and make no sign ! 

To the better order of such minds any mad joy 
of Denial has long since ceased : the problem is not 
now to deny, but to ascertain and perform. Once 
in destroying the False, there was a certain inspi- 
ration ; but now the genius of Destruction has done 
its work, there is now nothing more to destroy. 
The doom of the Old has long been pronounced, and 
irrevocable; the Old has passed away: but, alas, 
the New appears not in its stead; the Time is still 
in pangs of travail with the New. Man has walked 
by the light of conflagrations, and amid the sound of 
falling cities ; and now there is darkness, and long 
watching till it be morning. The voice even of the 
faithful can but exclaim : ** As yet struggles the 
twelfth hour of the Night: birds of darkness are 
on the wing, spectres uproar, the dead walk, the 
living dream. — Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt 
cause the day to dawn ! " ^ 

Such being the condition, temporal and spiritual, 
of the world at our Epoch, can we wonder that the 
world " listens to itself," and struggles and writhes, 
everywhere externally and internally, like a thing 
in pain? Nay, is not even this unhealthy action of 
the world's Organisation, if the symptom of uni- 
versal disease, yet also the symptom and sole means 
of restoration and cure? The effort of Nature, 
exerting her medicative force to cast out foreign 
impediments, and once more become One, become 
whole? In Practice, still more in Opinion, which 
is the precursor and prototype of Practice, there 
must needs be collision, convulsion; much has to 

1 Jean Paul's " Hesperus" (Vorrede). 



220 Best English Essays 

be ground away. Thought must needs be Doubt 
and Inquiry, before it can again be Affirmation and 
Sacred Precept. Innumerable " Philosophies of 
Man," contending in boundless hubbub, must anni- 
hilate each other, before an inspired Poesy and 
Faith for Man can fashion itself together. 

From this stunning hubbub, a true Babel-like 
confusion of tongues, we have here selected two 
Voices; less as objects of praise or condemnation, 
than as signs how far the confusion has reached, 
what prospect there is of its abating. Friedrich 
Schlegel's '' Lectures " delivered at Dresden, and 
Mr. Hope's " Essay " published in London, are 
the latest utterances of European Speculation: far 
asunder in external place, they stand at a still wider 
distance in inward purport; are, indeed, so oppo- 
site and yet so cognate that they may, in many 
senses, represent the two Extremes of our whole 
modern system of Thought ; and be said to include 
between them all the Metaphysical Philosophies, so 
often alluded to here, which, of late times, from 
France, Germany, England, have agitated and al- 
most overwhelmed us. Both in regard to matter 
and to form, the relation of these two Works is 
significant enough. 

Speaking first of their cognate qualities, let us 
remark, not without emotion, one quite extraneous 
point of agreement; the fact that the Writers of 
both have departed from this world ; they have 
now finished their search, and had all doubts re- 
solved : while we listen to the voice, the tongue 
that uttered it has gone silent for ever. But the 
fundamental, all-pervading similarity lies in this 



Carlyle 221 

circumstance, well worthy of being noted, that both 
these Philosophies are of the Dogmatic or Con- 
structive sort : each in its way is a kind of Genesis ; 
an endeavour to bring the Phenomena of man's 
Universe once more under some theoretic Scheme: 
in both there is a decided principle of unity; they 
strive after a result which shall be positive; their 
aim is not to question, but to establish. This, es- 
pecially if we consider with what comprehensive 
concentrated force it is here exhibited, forms a new 
feature in such works. 

Under all other aspects, there is the most irrecon- 
cilable opposition ; a staring contrariety, such as 
might provoke contrasts, were there far fewer points 
of comparison. If Schlegel's Work is the apothe- 
osis of Spiritualism ; Hope's again is the apotheosis 
of Materialism : in the one, all Matter is evaporated 
into a Phenomenon, and terrestrial Life itself, with 
its whole doings and showings, held out as a Dis- 
turbance {Zerrilttung) produced by the Zeitgeist 
(Spirit of Time) ; in the other, Matter is distilled 
and sublimated into some semblance of Divinity: 
the one regards Space and Time as mere forms 
of man's mind, and without external existence or 
reality; the other supposes Space and Time to be 
" incessantly created," and rayed-in upon us Hke 
a sort of *' gravitation." Such is their difference in 
respect of purport: no less striking is it in respect 
of manner, talent, success and all outward char- 
acteristics. Thus, if in Schlegel we have to admire 
the power of Words, in Hope we stand astonished, 
it might almost be said, at the want of an articulate 
Language. To Schlegel his Philosophic Speech is 
obedient, dextrous, exact, like a promptly minis- 



222 Best English Essays 

tering genius ; his names are so clear, so precise 
and vivid, that they almost (sometimes altogether) 
become things for him : with Hope there is no 
Philosophical Speech ; but a painful, confused stam- 
mering, and struggling after such ; or the tongue, 
as in doatish forgetfulness, maunders, low, long- 
winded, and speaks not the word intended, but 
another; so that here the scarcely intelligible, in 
these endless convolutions, becomes the wholly un- 
readable ; and often we could ask, as that mad pupil 
did of his tutor in Philosophy, '' But whether is 
Virtue a fluid, then, or a gas?" If the fact, that 
Schlegel, in the city of Dresden, could find audience 
for such high discourse, may excite our envy; this 
other fact, that a person of strong powers, skilled in 
EngHsh Thought and master of its Dialect, could 
write the '' Origin and Prospects of Man," may 
painfully remind us of the reproach, that England 
has now no language for Meditation ; that England, 
the most calculative, is the least meditative, of all 
civilised countries. 

It is not our purpose to offer any criticism of 
Schlegel's Book; in such limits as were possible 
here, we should despair of communicating even the 
faintest image of its significance. To the mass of 
readers, indeed, both among the Germans them- 
selves, and still more elsewhere, it nowise addresses 
itself, and may lie for ever sealed. We point it out 
as a remarkable document of the Time and of the 
Man ; can recommend it, moreover, to all earnest 
Thinkers, as a work deserving their best regard; 
a work full of deep meditation, wherein the infinite 
mystery of Life, if not represented, is decisively 
recognised. Of Schlegel himself, and his character, 



Carlyle 223 

and spiritual history, we can profess no thorough 
or final understanding ; yet enough to make us view 
him with admiration and pity, nowise with harsh 
contemptuous censure; and must say, with clearest 
persuasion, that the outcry of his being *' a rene- 
gade," and so forth, is but like other such outcries, 
a judgment where there was neither jury, nor evi- 
dence, nor judge. The candid reader, in this Book 
itself, to say nothing of all the rest, will find traces 
of a high, far-seeing, earnest spirit, to whom " Aus- 
trian Pensions," and the Kaiser's crown, and Austria 
altogether, were but a light matter to the finding 
and vitally appropriating of Truth. Let us respect 
the sacred mystery of a Person; rush not irrev- 
erently into man's Holy of Holies! Were the lost 
little one, as we said already, found '' sucking its 
dead mother, on the field of carnage," could it be 
other than a spectacle for tears ? A solemn mourn- 
ful feeling comes over us when we see this last 
Work of Friedrich Schlegel, the unwearied seeker, 
end abruptly in the middle; and, as if he had not 
yet found, as if emblematically of much, end with 
an '' Aher — " with a ** But — " ! This was the 
last word that came from the Pen of Friedrich 
Schlegel: about eleven at night he wrote it down, 
and there paused sick ; at one in the morning, 
Time for him had merged itself in Eternity; he 
was, as we say, no more. ' 

Still less can we attempt any criticism of Mr. 
Hope's new " Book of Genesis." Indeed, under any 
circumstances, criticism of it were now impossible. 
Such an utterance could only be responded to in 
peals of laughter; and laughter sounds hollow and 
hideous through the vaults of the dead. Of this 



224 Best English Essays 

monstrous Anomaly, where all sciences are heaped 
and huddled together, and the principles of all are, 
with a childlike innocence, plied hither and thither, 
or wholly abolished in case of need; where the 
First Cause is figured as a huge Circle, with nothing 
to do but radiate '' gravitation " towards its centre ; 
and so construct a Universe, wherein all, from the 
lowest cucumber with its coolness, up to the highest 
seraph with his love, were but " gravitation," direct 
or reflex, " in more or less central globes," — what 
can we say, except, with sorrow and shame, that 
it could have originated nowhere save in England? 
It is a general agglomerate of all facts, notions, 
whims and observations, as they lie in the brain of 
an English gentleman ; as an English gentleman, of 
unusual thinking power, is led to fashion them, in 
his schools and in his world : all these thrown into 
the crucible, and if not fused, yet soldered or conglu- 
tinated with boundless patience; and now tumbled 
out here, heterogeneous, amorphous, unspeakable, a 
world's wonder. Most melancholy must we name 
the whole business ; full of long-continued thought, 
earnestness, loftiness of mind; not without glances 
into the Deepest, a constant fearless endeavour after 
truth; and with all this nothing accomplished, but 
the perhaps absurdest Book written in our century 
by a thinking man. A shameful Abortion; which, 
however, need not now be smothered or mangled, 
for it is already dead; only, in our love and sor- 
rowing reverence for the writer of " Anastasius," 
and the heroic seeker of Light, though not bringer 
thereof, let it be buried and forgotten. 

For ourselves, the loud discord which jars in 
these two Works, in innumerable works of the like 



Carlyle 225 

import, and generally in all the Thought and Action 
of this period, does not any longer utterly confuse 
us. Unhappy who, in such a time, felt not, at all 
conjunctures, ineradicably in his heart the knowl- 
edge that a God made this Universe, and a Demon 
not! And shall Evil always prosper, then? Out 
of all Evil comes Good ; and no Good that is pos- 
sible but shall one day be real. Deep and sad as 
is our feeling that we stand yet in the bodeful 
Night ; equally deep, indestructible is our assurance 
that the Morning also will not fail. Nay already, 
as we look round, streaks of a dayspring are in the 
east; it is dawning; when the time shall be ful- 
filled, it will be day. The progress of man towards 
higher and nobler developments of whatever is 
highest and noblest in him, lies not only prophesied 
to Faith, but now written to the eye of Observation, 
so that he who runs may read. 

One great step of progress, for example, we 
should say, in actual circumstances, was this same; 
the clear ascertainment that we are in progress. 
About the grand Course of Providence, and his 
final Purposes with us, we can know nothing, or 
almost nothing: man begins in darkness, ends in 
darkness ; mystery is everywhere around us and 
in us, under our feet, among our hands. Never- 
theless so much has become evident to every one, 
that this wondrous Mankind is advancing some- 
whither; that at least all human things are, have 
been and for ever will be, in Movement and Change ; 
— as, indeed, for beings that exist in Time, by 
virtue of Time, and are made of Time, might have 
been long since understood. In some provinces, it 
is true, as in Experimental Science, this discovery is 

IS 



226 Best English Essays 

an old bne; but in most others it belongs wholly 
to these latter days. How often, in former ages, 
by eternal Creeds, eternal Forms of Government 
and the like, has it been attempted, fiercely enough, 
and with destructive violence, to chain the Future 
under the Past; and say to the Providence, whose 
ways with man are mysterious, and through the 
great deep: Hitherto shalt thou come, but no 
farther ! A wholly insane attempt ; and for man 
himself, could it prosper, the frightfulest of all 
enchantments, a very Life-in-Death. Man's task 
here below, the destiny of every individual man, 
is to be in turns Apprentice and Workman ; or say 
rather. Scholar, Teacher, Discoverer: by nature he 
has a strength for learning, for imitating; but also 
a strength for acting, for knowing on his own 
account. Are we not in a world seen to be Infinite ; 
the relations lying closest together modified by those 
latest discovered and lying farthest asunder ? Could 
you ever spell-bind man into a Scholar merely, so 
that he had nothing to discover, to correct; could 
you ever establish a Theory of the Universe that 
were entire, unimprovable, and which needed only 
to be got by heart; man then were spiritually 
defunct, the Species we now name Man had ceased 
to exist. But the gods, kinder to us than we are 
to ourselves, have forbidden such suicidal acts. As 
Phlogiston is displaced by Oxygen, and the Epi- 
cycles of Ptolemy by the Ellipses of Kepler; so 
does Paganism give place to Catholicism, Tyranny 
to Monarchy, and Feudalism to Representative Gov- 
ernment, — where also the process does not stop. 
Perfection of Practice, like completeness of Opinion, 
is always approaching, never arrived; Truth, in 



Carlyle 227 

the words of Schiller, immer wird, nie ist; never is, 
always is a-being. 

Sad, truly, were our condition did we know 
but this, that Change is universal and inevitable. 
Launched into a dark shoreless sea of Pyrrhonism, 
what would remain for us but to sail aimless, hope- 
less; or make madly merry, while the devouring 
Death had not yet engulfed us ? As indeed, we have 
seen many, and still see many do. Nevertheless so 
stands it not. The venerator of the Past (and to 
what pure heart is the Past, in that " moonlight of 
memory," other than sad and holy?) sorrows not 
over its departure, as one utterly bereaved. The 
true Past departs not, nothing that was worthy in 
the Past departs; no Truth or Goodness realised 
by man ever dies, or can die; but is all still here, 
and, recognised or not, lives and works through 
endless changes. If all things, to speak in the Ger- 
man dialect, are discerned by us, and exist for us, 
in an element of Time, and therefore of Mortality 
and Mutability ; yet Time itself reposes on Eternity : 
the truly Great and Transcendental has its basis 
and substance in Eternity; stands revealed to us 
as Eternity in a vesture of Time. Thus in all 
Poetry, Worship, Art, Society, as one form passes 
into another, nothing is lost: it is but the super- 
ficial, as it were the body only, that grows obsolete 
and dies ; under the mortal body lies a soid which 
is immortal; which anew incarnates itself in fairer 
revelation ; and the Present is the living sum-total 
of the whole Past. 

In Change, therefore, there is nothing terrible, 
nothing supernatural: on the contrary, it lies in 
the very essence of our lot and Hfe in this world. 



2 28 Best English Essays 

To-day is not yesterday : we ourselves change ; how 
can our Works and Thoughts, if they are always to 
be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, 
indeed, is painful ; yet ever needful ; and if Mem- 
ory have its force and worth, so also has Hope. 
Nay, if we look well to it, what is all Derangement, 
and necessity of great Change, in itself such an 
evil, but the product simply of increased resources 
which the old methods can no longer administer; 
of new wealth which the old coffers will no longer 
contain? What is it, for example, that in our own 
day bursts asunder the bonds of ancient Political 
Systems, and perplexes all Europe with the fear of 
Change, but even this: the increase of social re- 
sources, which the old social methods will no longer 
sufficiently administer? The new omnipotence of 
the Steam-engine is hewing asunder quite other 
mountains than the physical. Have not our eco- 
nomical distresses, those barnyard Conflagrations 
themselves, the frightfulest madness of our mad 
epoch, their rise also in what is a real increase: 
increase of Men; of human Force; properly, in 
such a Planet as ours, the most precious of all in- 
creases? It is true again, the ancient methods of 
administration will no longer suffice. Must the 
indomitable millions, full of old Saxon energy and 
fire, lie cooped-up in this Western nook, choking 
one another, as in a Blackhole of Calcutta, while a 
whole fertile untenanted Earth, desolate for want 
of the ploughshare, cries : Come and till me, come 
and reap me ? If the ancient Captains can no longer 
yield guidance, new must be sought after: for the 
difficulty lies not in nature, but in artifice ; the Euro- 
pean Calcutta-Blackhole has no walls but air ones 



Carlyle 229 

and paper ones. — So, too, Scepticism itself, with 
its innumerable mischiefs, what is it but the sour 
fruit of a most blessed increase, that of Knowledge ; 
a fruit too that will not always continue sourf 

In fact, much as we have said and mourned about 
the unproductive prevalence of Metaphysics, it was 
not without some insight into the use that lies in 
them. Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary 
evil, is the forerunner of much good. The fever of 
Scepticism must needs burn itself out, and burn out 
thereby the Impurities that caused it ; then again 
will there be clearness, health. The principle of life, 
which now struggles painfully, in the outer, thin 
and barren domain of the Conscious or Mechan- 
ical, may then withdraw into its inner sanctua- 
ries, its abysses of mystery and miracle; withdraw 
deeper than ever into that domain of the Uncon- 
scious, by nature infinite and inexhaustible ; and cre- 
atively work there. From that mystic region, and 
from that alone, all wonders, all Poesies, and Re- 
ligions, and Social Systems have proceeded: the 
like wonders, and greater and higher, lie slumbering 
there; and, brooded on by the spirit of the waters, 
will evolve themselves, and rise like exhalations 
from the Deep. 

Of our Modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may 
not this already be said, that if they have produced 
no Affirmation, they have destroyed much Nega- 
tion ? It is a disease expelling a disease : the fire of 
Doubt, as above hinted, consuming away the Doubt- 
ful ; that so the Certain come to light, and again lie 
visible on the surface. English or French Meta- 
physics, in reference to this last stage of the specu- 
lative process, are not what we allude to here; but 



230 Best English Essays 

only the Metaphysics of the Germans. In France 
or England, since the days of Diderot and Hume, 
though all thought has been of a sceptico-meta- 
physical texture, so far as there was any Thought, 
we have seen no Metaphysics ; but only more or less 
ineffectual questionings whether such could be. In 
the Pyrrhonism of Hume and the Materialism of 
Diderot, Logic had, as it were, overshot itself, over- 
set itself. Now, though the athlete, to use our old 
figure, cannot, by much lifting, lift up his own 
body, he may shift it out of a laming posture, and 
get to stand in a free' one. Such a service have 
German Metaphysics done for man's mind. The 
second sickness of Speculation has abolished both 
itself and the first. Friedrich Schlegel complains 
much of the fruitlessness, the tumult and transiency 
of German as of all Metaphysics ; and with reason. 
Yet in that wide-spreading, deep-whirling vortex 
of Kantism, so soon metamorphosed into Fichteism, 
Schellingism, and then as Hegelism, and Cousinism, 
perhaps finally evaporated, is not this issue visible 
enough, That Pyrrhonism and Materialism, them- 
selves necessary phenomena in European culture, 
have disappeared; and a Faith in Religion has 
again become possible and inevitable for the scien- 
tific mind; and the word Fr^Mhinker no longer 
means the Denier or Caviller, but the Believer, or 
the Ready to believe? Nay, in the higher Litera- 
ture of Germany, there already lies, for him that 
can read it, the beginning of a new revelation of the 
GodHke; as yet unrecognised by the mass of the 
world; but waiting there for recognition, and sure 
to find it when the fit hour comes. This age also 
is not wholly without its Prophets. 



Carlyle 23 1 

Again, under another aspect, if Utilitarianism, or 
Radicalism, or the Mechanical Philosophy, or by 
whatever name it is called, has still its long task to 
do ; nevertheless we can now see through it and be- 
yond it : in the better heads, even among us English* 
it has become obsolete ; as in other countries, it has 
been, in such heads, for some forty or even fifty 
years. What sound mind among the French, for 
example, now fancies that men can be governed by 
" Constitutions " ; by the never so cunning mechan- 
ising of Self-interests, and all conceivable adjust- 
ments of checking and balancing ; in a word, by the 
best possible solution of this quite insoluble and im- 
possible problem, Given a world of Knaves, to pro- 
duce an Honesty from their united action? Were 
not experiments enough of this kind tried before all 
Europe, and found wanting, when, in that dooms- 
day of France, the infinite gulf of human Passion 
shivered asunder the thin rinds of Habit ; and burst 
forth all-devouring, as in seas of Nether Fire? 
Which cunningly-devised *' Constitution," consti- 
tutional, republican, democratic, sansculottic, could 
bind that raging chasm together? Were they not 
all burnt up, like paper as they were, in its molten 
eddies; and still the fire-sea raged fiercer than 
before? It is not by Mechanism, but by Religion; 
not by Self-interest, but by Loyalty, that men are 
governed or governable. 

Remarkable it is, truly, how everywhere the 
eternal fact begins again to be recognised, that there 
is a Godlike in human affairs; that God not only 
made us and beholds us, but is in us and around us ; 
that the Age of Miraclesj as it ever was, now is. 
Such recognition we discern on all hands and in all 



232 Best English Essays 

countries: in each country after its own fashion. 
In France, among the younger nobler minds, 
strangely enough; where, in their loud contention 
with the Actual and Conscious, the Ideal or Uncon- 
scious is, for the time, without exponent; where 
Religion means not the parent of Polity, as of all 
that is highest, but Polity itself; and this and the 
other earnest man has not been wanting, who could 
audibly whisper to himself : " Go to, I will make a 
religion.'* In England still more strangely; as in 
all things, worthy England will have its way: by 
the shrieking of hysterical women, casting out of 
devils, and other " gifts of the Holy Ghost." Well 
might Jean Paul say, in this his twelfth hour of the 
Night, " the living dream " ; well might he say, 
*' the dead walk." Meanwhile let us rejoice rather 
that so much has been seen into, were it through 
never so diffracting media, and never so madly dis- 
torted; that in all dialects, though but half-articu- 
lately, this high Gospel begins to be preached : Man 
is still Man. The genius of Mechanism, as was 
once before predicted, will not always sit like a 
choking incubus on our soul; but at length, when 
by a new magic Word the old spell is broken, be- 
come our slave, and as familiar-spirit do all our 
bidding. " We are near awakening when we dream 
that we dream." 

He that has an eye and a heart can even now say : 
Why should I falter? Light has come into the 
world; to such as love Light, so as Light must be 
loved, with a boundless all-doing, all-enduring love. 
For the rest, let that vain struggle to read the mystery 
of the Infinite cease to harass us. It is a mystery 
which, through all ages, we shall only read here a, 



Carlyle 233 

line of, there another Hne of. Do we not already 
know that the name of the Infinite is Good, is God ? 
Here on Earth we are as Soldiers, fighting in a 
foreign land; that understand not the plan of the 
campaign, and have no need to understand it ; see- 
ing well what is at our hand to be done. Let us do 
it like Soldiers; with submission, with courage, 
with a heroic joy. '' Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
to do, do it with all thy might." Behind us, behind 
each one of us, lie Six Thousand Years of human 
effort, human conquest: before us is the boundless 
Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered 
Continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have 
to conquer, to create ; and from the bosom of Eter- 
nity there shine for us celestial guiding stars. 

" My inheritance how wide and fair ! 
Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I 'm heir." 



VII 
EMERSON 



EMERSON: 
THE LECTURER 

IF Carlyle was the prophet who spoke in 
words which compelled attention, and Ma- 
caulay was the orator who won attention 
by his eloquence, Emerson was the lecturer who 
gained and held the attention of those who 
chanced to read him by the simple interest of what 
he had to say. While he was devoted to the phi- 
losophy which he tried to illustrate, deeply de- 
voted, still he did not conceive it to be a gospel 
which he was to preach at all hazards, and his 
motives were too impersonal to make him in- 
clined to use the persuasive arts of the orator. 
He was a seer who realized that he saw more 
deeply into the essential truths of life than his 
fellows, and he wished as far as he could to enable 
all men to see as he saw. Still he had such con- 
fidence in the power of truth, and especially of the 
truth he had to state, that he was never inclined 
to force or press his point. He merely offered 
what he had, and those who cared might take it. 
Emerson called himself a Transcendentalist. 
He had in reality come to perceive the essential 
points of the philosophy of Kant, Comte, Hegel, 



238 Best English Essays 

and their fellows, which taught in effect that man, 
matter, and God are not three separate entities, 
but merely manifestations of one and the same 
substance. Hence both man and matter are seen 
to be divine in substance, the words ''human" and 
"material" merely indicating limitation. There- 
fore the laws of nature are also the laws of God, 
and in our own hearts we have a bit of the divine 
which we may study at first hand if we will. 
Emerson knew that to state this philosophy baldly 
would make it mean nothing in the ordinary 
man's mental economy; so he proceeded to give 
it as practically applied to the various simple 
problems of life. The reader's intuition would 
show him the truth of each application ; and when 
he has applied the general principle in a few hun- 
dred or thousand special instances and illustra- 
tions, he becomes unconsciously imbued with the 
general principle itself, though he may not be 
able to state it in general terms, or even under- 
stand that he is possessed of anything he has not 
always had. 

Once possessed of the philosophic key, the 
lecturer himself easily perceives each particular 
application; but making it clear to the reader is 
a serious problem. A plain statement will not do, 
for there is no language in which the funda- 
mental ideas can be expressed which the ordinary 
reader will comprehend. The mere philosopher 
proceeds to create a technical language of his 
own; the lecturer for a popular audience can- 



Emerson 239 

not do that, but must make himself understood 
through images and combinations of common 
notions. A language of figures and parables 
must be created instead of a technical one. The 
problem is at once the simplest and the most diffi- 
cult which the creative writer has to face. 

As Emerson's object is to give his reader the 
general point of view, with all its revelations, and 
as he sets out to do this by a succession of con- 
crete illustrations, one illustration may be as 
effective as another, and we get the whole of the 
Emersonian philosophy in every paragraph, al- 
most in every sentence. Each sentence or each 
paragraph is essentially complete in itself, and we 
may begin reading at any point and continue to 
any point, yet cover our subject completely as 
far as we go. The essay on " Self-Reliance " has 
been selected because the general subject is so 
practical and so personal; and when Emerson 
felt that he was making himself useful to his 
hearers he was at his best. 

Emerson uses very short sentences that seem 
more or less abrupt. This is due apparently to 
his habit of thought and his desire to express 
himself in the simplest possible way. Certainly 
he makes no such rhetorical use of the short sen- 
tence as the later " epigrammatic writers " ; e. g., 
Stephen Crane in " The Red Badge of Courage." 



240 Best English Essays 



SELF-RELIANCE 

" Ne te qusesiveris extra." 

" Man is his own star ; and the soul that can 
Render an honest and a perfect man, 
Commands all light, all influence, all fate ; 
Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." 
Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's " Honest Man's Fortunes" 

Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat ; 
Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
Power and speed be hands and feet. 

I READ the other day some verses written by an 
eminent painter which were original and not 
conventional. The soul always hears an admonition 
in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The 
sentiment they instil is of more value than any 
thought they may contain. To believe your own 
thought, to believe that what is true for you in your 
private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. 
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the 
universal sense ; for the inmost in due time becomes 
the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered 
back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 
Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the 
highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Mil- 
ton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, 
and spoke not what men but what they thought. 
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam 
of light which flashes across his mind from within, 
more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and 



Emerson 241 

sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, 
because it is his. In every work of genius we 
recognize our own rejected thoughts : they come 
back to us with a certain aHenated majesty. Great 
works of art have no more affecting lesson for us 
than this. They teach us to abide by our spon- 
taneous impression with good-humored inflexibiHty 
then most when the whole cry of voices is on the 
other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say 
with masterly good sense precisely what we have 
thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced 
to take with shame our own opinion from another. 
There is a time in every man's education when 
he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; 
that imitation is suicide ; that he must take himself 
for better, for worse, as his portion; that though 
the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of 
nourishing corn can come to him but through his 
toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given 
to him to till. The power which resides in him is 
new in nature, and none but he knows what that 
is which he can do, nor does he know until he has 
tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one 
fact, makes much impression on him, and another 
none. This sculpture in the memory is not with- 
out pre-established harmony. The eye was placed 
where one ray should fall, that it might testify of 
that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, 
and are ashamed of that divine idea which each 
of us represents. It may be safely trusted as pro- 
portionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully 
imparted, but God will not have his work made 
manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay 
When he has put his heart into his work and done 

16 



242 Best English Essays 

his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, 
shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which 
does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts 
him ; no muse befriends ; no invention, no hope. 

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron 
string. Accept the place the divine providence has 
found for you, the society of your contemporaries, 
the connection of events. Great men have always 
done so, and confided themselves childlike to the 
genius of their age, betraying their perception that 
the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, 
working through their hands, predominating in all 
their being. And we are now men, and must accept 
in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; 
and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, 
not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, 
redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty 
eifort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. 

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, 
in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even 
brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust 
of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed 
the strength and means opposed to our purpose, 
these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye 
is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their 
faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to no- 
body : all conform to it, so that one babe commonly 
makes four or five out of the adults who prattle 
and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty 
and manhood no less with its own piquancy and 
charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its 
claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. 
Do not think the youth has no force, because he 
cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next 



Emerson 243 

room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. 
It seems he knows how to speak to his contem- 
poraries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how 
to make us seniors very unnecessary. 

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, 
and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say 
aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of 
human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the 
pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, 
looking out from his corner on such people and facts 
as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their 
merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, 
bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He 
cumbers himself never about consequences, about 
interests ; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. 
You must court him : he does not court you. But 
the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his 
consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or 
spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched 
by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose 
affections must now enter into his account. There 
is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again 
into his neutrality ! Who can thus avoid all pledges, 
and having observed, observe again from the same 
imaffected, unbiassed, unbribable, unaffrighted inno- 
cence, must always be formidable. He would utter 
opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen 
to be not private, but necessary, would sink like 
darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear. 

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, 
but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into 
the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy 
against the manhood of every one of its members. 
Society is a joint-stock company, in which the mem- 



244 ^^st English Essays 

bers agree, for the better securing of his bread to 
each shareholder, to surrender the Hberty and cul- 
ture of the eater. The virtue in most request is 
conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves 
not realities and creators, but names and customs. 

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. 
He who would gather immortal palms must not be 
hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore 
if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the 
integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to your- 
self, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I 
remember an answer which when quite young I was 
prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was 
wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines 
of the church. On my saying. What have I to do 
with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly 
from within ? my friend suggested : " But these 
impulses may be from below, not from above." I 
replied : " They do not seem to me to be such ; but 
if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the 
Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of 
my nature. Good and bad are but names very 
readily transferable to that or this; the only right 
is what is after my constitution, the only wrong 
what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the 
presence of all opposition, as if everything were titu- 
lar and ephemeral but him. I am ashamed to think 
how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to 
large societies and dead institutions. Every decent 
and well-spoken individual affects and sways me 
more than is right. I ought to go upright and 
vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If 
malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, 
shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this 



Emerson 245 

bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with 
his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not 
say to him : ** Go love thy infant ; love thy wood- 
chopper : be good-natured and modest : have that 
grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable 
ambition with this incredible tenderness for black 
folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite 
at home." Rough and graceless would be such 
greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation 
of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, 

— else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be 
preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of 
love when that pules and whines. I shun father 
and mother and wife and brother, when my genius 
calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door- 
post. Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than 
whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in ex- 
planation. Expect me not to show cause why I 
seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do 
not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obli- 
gation to put all poor men in good situations. Are 
they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philan- 
thropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the 
cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me 
and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of 
persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought 
and sold ; for them I will go to prison, if need be ; 
but your miscellaneous popular charities ; the edu- 
cation at college of fools ; the building of meeting- 
houses to the vain end to which many now stand; 
alms to sots ; and the thousand-fold Relief Societies ; 

— though I confess with shame I sometimes suc- 
cumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which 
by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. 



246 Best English Essays 

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the 
exception than the rule. There is the man and his 
virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as 
some piece of courage or charity, much as they 
would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appear- 
ance on parade. Their works are done as an apol- 
ogy or extenuation of their living in the world, — 
as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their 
virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but 
to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. 
I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so 
it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glit- 
tering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and 
sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask 
primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse 
this appeal from the man to his actions. I know 
that for myself it makes no difference whether I do 
or forbear those actions which are reckoned excel- 
lent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where 
I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts 
may be, I actually am, and do not need for my 
own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any 
secondary testimony. 

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what 
the people think. This rule, equally arduous in 
actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the 
whole distinction between greatness and meanness. 
It is the harder, because you will always find those 
who think they know what is your duty better than 
you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the 
world's opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after 
our own ; but the great man is he who in the midst 
of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the in- 
dependence of solitude. 



Emerson 247 

The objection to conforming to usages that have 
become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. 
It loses your time and bhtrs the impression of your 
character. If you maintain a dead church, contrib- 
ute to a dead Bible society, vote with a great party 
either for the government or against it, spread your 
table like base housekeepers, — under all these 
screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man 
you are. And, of course, so much force is with- 
drawn from your proper life. But do your work, 
and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall 
reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a 
blind-man's-buff is this game of conformity. If I 
know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear 
a preacher announce for his text and topic the ex- 
pediency of one of the institutions of his church. 
Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he 
say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know 
that, with all this ostentation of examining the 
grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? 
Do I not' know that he is pledged to himself not to 
look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a 
man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained 
attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest 
affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes 
with one or another handkerchief, and attached 
themselves to some one of these communities of 
opinion. This conformity makes them not false in 
a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in 
all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. 
Their two is not the real two, their four not the real 
four ; so that every word they say chagrins us, and 
we know not where to begin to set them right. 
Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the 



248 Best English Essays 

prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. 
We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and 
acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. 
There is a mortifying experience in particular, 
which does not fail to wreak itself also in the gen- 
eral history ; I mean " the foolish face of praise," 
the forced smile which we put on in company where 
we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation 
which does not interest us. The muscles, not spon- 
taneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wil- 
fulness, grow tight about the outline of the face 
with the most disagreeable sensation. 

For non-conformity the world whips you with 
its displeasure. And therefore a man must know 
how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look 
askance on him in the public street or in the friend's 
parlor. If this aversation had its origin in con- 
tempt and resistance like his own, he might well go 
home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces 
of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep 
cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and 
a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the 
multitude more formidable than that of the senate 
and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man 
who knows the world to brook the rage of the culti- 
vated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, 
for they are timid as being very vulnerable them- 
selves. But when to their feminine rage the indig- 
nation of the people is added, when the ignorant and 
the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute 
force that lies at the bottom of society is made to 
growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity 
and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no 
concernment. 



Emerson 249 

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is 
our consistency; a reverence for our past act or 
word, because the eyes of others have no other data 
for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we 
are loath to disappoint them. 

But why should you keep your head over your 
shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your 
memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have 
stated in this or that public place? Suppose you 
should contradict yourself; what then? It seems 
to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory 
alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to 
bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed 
present, and live ever in a new day. In your meta- 
physics you have denied personality to the Deity: 
yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield 
to them heart and life, though they should clothe 
God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as 
Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little ^ 
minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers 
and divines. With consistency a great soul has 
simply nothing to do. He may as well concern him- 
self with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you 
think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what 
to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it 
contradict everything you said to-day. — " Ah, so 
you shall be sure to be misunderstood ? " — Is it so , 
bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was 
misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, 
and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every 
pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great 
is to be misunderstood. 

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the 



250 Best English Essays 

sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his 
being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh 
are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor 
does it matter how you gauge and try him. A char- 
acter is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza ; — 
read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells 
the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-Hfe 
which God allows me, let me record day by day my 
honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, 
I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though 
I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell 
of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The 
swallow over my window should interweave that 
thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web 
also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches 
above our wills. Men imagine that they communi- 
cate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and 
do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every 
moment. 

There will be an agreement in whatever variety 
of actions, so they be each honest and natural in 
their hour. For of one will, the actions will be 
harmonious, however unlike they seem. These 
varieties are lost sight of at a Httle distance, at a 
little height of thought. One tendency unites them 
all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line 
of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient 
distance, and it straightens itself to the average 
tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, 
and will explain your other genuine actions. Your 
conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what 
you have already done singly will justify you now. 
Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm 
enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must 



Emerson 251 

have done so much right before as to defend me 
now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn 
appearances, and you always may. The force of 
character is cumulative. All the foregone days of 
virtue work their health into this. What makes 
the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, 
which so fills the imagination? The consciousness 
of a train of great days and victories behind. They 
shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is 
attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is 
it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and 
dignity into Washington's port, and America into 
Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it 
is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We 
worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We 
love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap 
for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self- 
derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedi- 
gree, even if shown in a young person. 

I hope in these days we have heard the last of con- 
formity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted 
and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong 
for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan 
fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A 
great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not 
wish to please him ; I wish that he should wish to 
please me. I will stand here for humanity, and 
though I would make it kind, I would make it true. 
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity 
and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in 
the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact 
which is the upshot of all history, that there is a 
great responsible Thinker and Actor working wher- 
ever a man works ; that a true man belongs to no 



252 Best English Essays 

other time or place, but is the centre of things. 
Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and 
all men, and all events. Ordinarily, everybody in 
society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some 
other person. Character, reality, reminds you of 
nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. 
The man must be so much, that he must make all 
circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a 
cause, a country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces 
and numbers and time fully to accomplish his de- 
sign ; — and posterity seems to follow his steps as 
a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for 
ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is 
born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to 
his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and 
the possible of man. An institution is the length- 
ened shadow of one man; as Monachism, of the 
Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; 
Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abo- 
lition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called " the 
height of Rome " ; and all history resolves itself 
very easily into the biography of a few stout and 
earnest persons. 

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things 
under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk 
up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, 
or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. 
But the man in the street, finding no worth in him- 
self which corresponds to the force which built a 
tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when 
he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a 
costly book has an alien and forbidding air, much 
like a gay equipagre, and seems to say like that, 
"Who are you, sir?" Yet they all are his suitors 



Emerson 253 

for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they 
will come out and take possession. The picture 
waits for my verdict : it is not to command me, but 
I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular 
fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in 
the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and 
dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his wak- 
ing, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the 
duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its 
popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the 
state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but 
now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and 
finds himself a true prince. 

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In 
history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom 
and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocab- 
ulary than private John and Edward in a small 
house and common day's work; but the things of 
life are the same to both ; the sum total of both are 
the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and 
Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were 
virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a 
stake depends on your private act to-day, as fol- 
lowed their public and renowned steps. When pri- 
vate men shall act with original views, the lustre 
will be transferred from the actions of kings to those 
of gentlemen. 

The world has been instructed by its kings, who 
have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been 
taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence 
that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty 
with which men have everywhere suffered the king, 
the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among 
them by a law of his own, make his own scale of 



254 , B^st English Essays 

men and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits 
not with money but with honor, and represent the 
law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which 
they obscurely signified their consciousness of their 
own right and comeliness, the right of every man. 

The magnetism which all original action exerts 
is explained when we inquire the reason of self- 
trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aborig- 
inal Self, on which a universal reliance may be 
grounded? What is the nature and power of that 
science-baffling star, without parallax, without cal- 
culable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even 
into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark 
of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to 
that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, 
and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. 
We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst 
all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, 
the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all 
things find their common origin. For, the sense 
of being which in calm hours rises, we know not 
how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from 
space, from light, from time, from man, but one 
with them, and proceeds obviously from the same 
source whence their life and being also proceed. We 
first share the life by which things exist, and after- 
wards see them as appearances in nature, and forget 
that we have shared their cause. Here is the foun- 
tain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs 
of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and 
which cannot be denied without impiety and athe- 
ism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, 
which makes us receivers of its truth and organs 
of its activity. When we discern justice, when we 



Emerson 2^^ 

discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow 
a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this 
comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all 
philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence 
is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates 
between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his in- 
voluntary perceptions, and knows that to his invol- 
untary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may 
err in the expression of them, but he knows that 
these things are so, like day and night, not to be dis- 
puted. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but 
roving ; — the idlest revery, the faintest native emo- 
tion, command my curiosity and respect. Thought- 
less people contradict as readily the statements of 
perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more 
readily; for, they do not distinguish between per- 
ception and notion. They fancy that I choose to 
see this or that thing. But perception is not whim- 
sical, it is fatal. If I see a trait, my children will 
see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, 
— although it may chance that no one has seen it 
before me. For my perception of it is as much a 
fact as the sun. 

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so 
pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. 
It must be that when God speaketh he should com- 
municate, not one thing, but all things ; should fill 
the world with his voice ; should scatter forth light, 
nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present 
thought; and new date and new create the whole. 
Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine 
wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, 
texts, temples, fall; it lives now, and absorbs past 
and future into the present hour. All things are 



2^6 Best English Essays 

made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as 
another. All things are dissolved to their centre by 
their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and 
particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man 
claims to know and speak of God, and carries you 
backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered 
nation in another country, in another world, believe 
him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is 
its fulness and completion? Is the parent better 
than the child into whom he has cast his ripened 
being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? 
The centuries are conspirators against the sanity 
and authority of the soul. Time and space are but 
physiological colors which the eye makes, but the 
soul is light ; where it is, is day ; where it was, is 
night; and history is an impertinence and an in- 
jury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue 
or parable of my being and becoming. 

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer 
upright ; he dares not say, " I think," " I am," but 
quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before 
the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses 
under my window make no reference to former 
roses or to better ones ; they are for what they are ; 
they exist with God to-day. There is no time to 
them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in 
every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud 
has burst, its whole Hfe acts; in the full-blown 
flower there is no more ; in the leafless root there is 
no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, 
in all moments alike. But man postpones or remem- 
bers ; he does not live in the present, but with 
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the 
riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to fore- 



i^merson 257 

see the future. He cannot be happy and strong until 
he too lives with nature in the present, above time. 

This should be plain enough. Yet see what 
strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, 
unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what 
David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always 
set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. 
We are like children who repeat by rote the sen- 
tences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow 
older, of the men of talents and character they 
chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact 
words they spoke ; afterwards, when they come into 
the point of view which those had who uttered these 
sayings, they understand them, and are willing to 
let the words go; for, at any time, they can use 
words as good when occasion comes. If we live 
truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong 
man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. 
When we have new perception, we shall gladly dis- 
burden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old 
rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice 
shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the 
rustle of the corn. 

And now at last the highest truth on this subject 
remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all 
that we say is the far-off remembering of the intu- 
ition. That thought, by what I can now nearest 
approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, 
when you have life in yourself, it is not by any 
known or accustomed way; you shall not discern 
the footprints of any other; you shall not see the 
face of man ; you shall not hear any name ; the way, 
the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and 
new. It shall exclude example and experience. 

17 



258 Best English' Essays 

You take the way from man, not to man. All per- 
sons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. 
Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is some- 
what low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there 
is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly 
joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity 
and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence 
of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing 
that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the 
Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of 
time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This 
which I think and feel underlay every former state 
of life and circumstances, as it does underHe my 
present, and what is called life, and what is called 
death. 

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power 
ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the 
.moment of transition from a past to a new state, in 
the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. 
This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; 
for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches 
to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds 
the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas 
equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self- 
reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there 
will be power not confident but agent. To talk of 
reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak 
rather of that which relies, because it works and is. 
Who has more obedience than I masters me, though 
he should not raise his finger. Round him I must 
revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it 
rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do 
not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or 
a company of men, plastic and permeable to prin- 



Emerson 259 

ciples, by the law of nature must overpower and ride 
all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are 
not. 

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly 
reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of 
all into the ever-blessed One. Self-existence is the 
attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes > 
the measure of good by the degree in which it enters 
into all lower forms. All things real are so by 
so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, hus- 
bandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal 
weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as 
examples of its presence and impure action. I see 
the same law working in nature for conservation 
and growth. Power is in nature the essential meas- 
ure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in 
her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis 
and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the 
bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, 
the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, 
are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and there- 
fore self-relying soul. 

Thus all concentrates : let us not rove ; let us sit 
at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish 
the intruding rabble of men and books and institu- 
tions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid 
the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for 
God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, 
and our docility to our own law demonstrate the 
poverty of nature and fortune beside our native 
riches. 

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in 
awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at 
home, to put itself in communication with the inter- 



26o Best English Essays 

nal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water 
of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I 
like the silent church before the service begins, 
better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, 
how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with 
a precinct or sanctuary ! So let us always sit. Why 
should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, 
or father, or child, because they sit around our 
hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All 
men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for 
that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to 
the extent of being ashamed of it. But the isolation 
must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must 
be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be 
in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. 
Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all 
knock at once at thy closet door, and say, " Come 
out unto us." But keep thy state; come not into 
their confusion. The power men possess to annoy 
me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can 
come near me but through my act. " What we love 
that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of 
the love." 

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obe- 
dience and faith, let us at least resist our tempta- 
tions ; let us enter into the state of war, and wake 
Thor and Woden, courage and constancy in our 
Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth 
times by speaking the truth. Check this lying 
hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to 
the expectation of these deceived and deceiving 
people with whom we converse. Say to them, O 
father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I 
have lived with you after appearances hitherto. 



Emerson 261 

Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto 
you that henceforward I obey no law less than the 
eternal law. I will have no covenants but proxim- 
ities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to 
support my family, to be the chaste husband of one 
wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new 
and unprecedented way. I appeal from your cus- 
toms. I must be myself. I cannot break myself 
any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for 
what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, 
I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will 
not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that 
what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before 
the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the 
heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; 
if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by 
hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not 
in the same truth with me, cleave to your compan- 
ions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, 
but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and 
mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt 
in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to- 
day? You will soon love what is dictated by your 
nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, 
it will bring us out safe at last. But so you may 
give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my 
liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Be- 
sides, all persons have their moments of reason, when 
they look out into the region of absolute truth ; then 
will they justify me, and do the same thing. 

The populace think that your rejection of popular 
standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere 
antinomianism ; and the bold sensualist will use the 
name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law 



262 Best English Essays 

of consciousness abides. There are two confes- 
sionals, in one or the other of which we must be 
shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by 
clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. 
Consider whether you have satisfied your relations 
to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and 
dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But 
I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve 
me to myself. I have my own stern claims and 
perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many 
offices that are called duties. But if I can dis- 
charge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the 
popular code. If any one imagines that this law is 
lax, let him keep its commandment one day. 

And truly it demands something godlike in him 
who has cast off the common motives of humanity, 
and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. 
High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, 
that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, 
law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to 
him as strong as iron necessity is to others ! 

If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
called by distinction society, he will see the need of 
these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to 
be drawn out, and we are become timorous, despond- 
ing whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of 
fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. 
Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We 
want men and women who shall renovate life and 
our social state, but we see that most natures are 
insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an 
ambition out of all proportion to their practical 
force, and do lean and beg day and night continu- 
ally. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our 



Emerson 263 

occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have 
not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are 
parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, 
where strength is born. 

If our young men miscarry in their first enter- 
prises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant 
fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius 
studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed 
in an office within one year afterwards in the cities 
or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his 
friends and to himself that he is right in being 
disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his 
life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Ver- 
mont, who in turn tries all the professions, who 
teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, 
edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a town- 
ship, and so forth, in successive years, and always, 
like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of 
these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, 
and feels no shame in not " studying a profession," 
for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. 
He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. 
Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell 
men they are not leaning willows, but can and must 
detach themselves ; that with the exercise of self- 
trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the 
word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nation^ 
that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and 
that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the 
laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the 
window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere 
him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of 
man to splendor, and make his name dear to all 
history. 



0.6^ Best English Essays 

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must 
work a revolution in all the offices and relations of 
men ; in their religion ; in their education ; in their 
pursuits; their modes of living; their association; 
in their property; in their speculative views. 

I. In what prayers do men allow themselves! 
That which they call a holy* office is not so much 
as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks 
for some foreign addition to come through some 
foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of 
natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and 
miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular com- 
modity, — anything less than all good, — is vicious. 
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from 
the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a 
beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God 
pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a 
means to effect a private end is meanness and 
theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature 
and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one 
with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer 
in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling 
in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower 
kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers 
heard throughout nature though for cheap ends. 
Caratach, in Fletcher's '* Bonduca," when admon- 
ished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, 
replies, — - 

" His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; 
Our valors are our best gods." 

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. 
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is 
infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can 



Emerson 265 

thereby help the sufferer: if not, attend your own 
work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. 
Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them 
who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for com- 
pany, instead of imparting to them truth and health 
in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in 
communication with their own reason. The secret 
of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore 
to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him 
all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, 
all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our 
love goes out to him and embraces him, because he 
did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically 
caress and celebrate him, because he held on his 
way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods 
love him because men hated him. '' To the per- 
severing mortal," said Zoroaster, " the blessed 
Immortals are swift." 

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are 
their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say 
with those foolish Israelites, " Let not God speak to 
us lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, 
and we will obey." Everywhere I am hindered of 
meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his 
own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his 
brother's or his brother's brother's God. Every new 
mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of 
uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, 
a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its 
classification on other men, and lo! a new system. 
In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so 
to the number of the objects it touches and brings 
within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But 
chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, 



266 Best English Essays 

which are also classifications of some powerful mind 
acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's 
relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quak- 
erism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same 
delight in subordinating everything to the new ter- 
minology, as a girl who has just learned botany 
in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. 
It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find 
his intellectual power has grown by the study of 
his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, 
the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and 
not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the 
walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote 
horizon with the walls of the universe; the lumi- 
naries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch 
their master built. They cannot imagine how you 
aliens have any right to see, — how you can see ; 
*' it must be somehow that you stole the light from 
us." They do not yet perceive, that light, unsyste- 
matic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even 
into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their 
own. If they are honest and do well, presently their 
neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will 
crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the im- 
mortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, 
million-colored, will beam over the universe as on 
the first morning. 

2. It is for want of self-culture that the super- 
stition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, 
Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Ameri- 
cans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece 
venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast 
where they were, like an axis of the earth. In 
manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The 



Emerson 267 

soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, 
and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion, 
call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he 
is at home still, and shall make men sensible by 
the expression of his countenance, that he goes the 
missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities 
and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper 
or a valet. 

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavi- 
gation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of 
study, and benevolence, so that the man is first 
domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope 
of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He 
who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat 
which he does not carry, travels away from himself, 
and grows old even in youth among old things. 
In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind' have 
become old and dilapidated as they. He carries 
ruins to ruins. 

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys 
discover to us the indifference of places. At home 
I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxi- 
cated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack 
my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, 
and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me 
is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, 
that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. 
I affect to be intoxicated with sights and sugges- 
tions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes 
with me wherever I go. 

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a 
deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual 
action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system 
of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel 



268 Best English Essays 

when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We 
imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of 
the mind ? Our houses are built with foreign taste ; 
our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; 
our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and 
follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created 
the arts wherever they have flourished. It was 
in his own mind that the artist sought his model. 
It was an application of his own thought to the 
thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. 
And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic 
model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, 
and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, 
and if the American artist will study with hope and 
love the precise thing to be done by him, considering 
the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants 
of the people, the habit and form of the govern- 
ment, he will create a house in which all these will 
find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will 
be satisfied also. 

Insist on yourself ; never imitate. Your own gift 
you can present every moment with the cumulative 
force of a whole fife's cultivation; but of the 
adopted talent of another, you have only an ex- 
temporaneous, half possession. That which each 
can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No 
man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person 
has exhibited it. Where is the master who could 
have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master 
who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, 
or Bacon, or Newton ? Every great man is a unique. 
The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he 
could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made 
by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is 



Emerson 269 

assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare 
too much. There is at this moment for you an 
utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal 
chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or 
the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all 
these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all elo- 
quent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat 
itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs 
say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch 
of voice ; for the ear and the tongue are two organs 
of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble re- 
gions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt 
reproduce the Foreworld again. 

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look 
abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume 
themselves on the improvement of society, and no 
man improves. 

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 
side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual 
changes ; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Chris- 
tianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change 
is not amelioration. For everything that is given, 
something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and 
loses old instincts. What a contrast between the 
well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with 
a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his 
pocket, and the naked New-Zealander, whose prop- 
erty is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided 
twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But com- 
pare the health of the two men, and you shall see 
that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. 
If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with 
a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall 
unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft 



270 Best English Essays 

pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to 
his grave. 

The civiUzed man has built a coach, but has lost 

(■ the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, 
but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a 
fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell 
the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac 
he has, and so being sure of the information when 
he wants it, the man in the street does not know 
a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe, 
the equinox he knows as little ; and the whole bright 
calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. 
His note-books impair his memory; his Hbraries 
overload his wit ; the insurance office increases the 
number of accidents; and it may be a question 
whether machinery does not encumber; whether 
we have not lost by refinement some energy, by 
a Christianity intrenched in establishments and 
forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic 
was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the 
Christian ? 

There is no more deviation in the moral standard 
than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater 
men are now than ever were. A singular equality 
may be observed between the great men of the first 
and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, 
religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century 

'^ avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, 
three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time 
is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anax- 
agoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave 
no class. He who is really of their class will not be 
called by their name, but will be his own man, and, 
in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and in- 



Emerson 271 

ventions of each period are only its costume, and 
do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved 
machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and 
Behring accompHshed so much in their fishing- 
boats, as to astonish Parry and Frankhn, v^hose 
equipment exhausted the resources of science and 
art. GaHleo, with an opera-glass, discovered a 
more splendid series of celestial phenomena than 
any one since. Columbus found the New World 
in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the period- 
ical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, 
which were introduced with loud laudation a few 
years or centuries before. The great genius returns 5 
to essential man. We reckoned the improvements 
of the art of war among the triumphs of science, 
and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, 
which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and 
disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held 
it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, 
" without abolishing our arms, magazines, commis- 
saries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Ro- 
man custom, the soldier should receive his supply 
of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread 
himself." 

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but 
the water of which it is composed does not. The 
same particle does not rise from the valley to the 
ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons 
who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and 
their experience with them. 

And so the reliance on Property, including the 
reliance on governments which protect it, is the 
want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from 
themselves and at things so long, that they have 



272 Best English Essays 

come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil in- 
stitutions as guards of property, and they deprecate 
assaults on these, because they feel them to be 
assaults on property. They measure their esteem 
of each other by what each has, and not by what 
each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of 
his property, out of new respect for his nature. 
Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it 
is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, 
or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it 
does not belong to him, has no root in him, and 
merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber 
takes it away. But that which a man is does always 
by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is 
living property, which does not wait the beck of 
rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or 
bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever 
the man breathes. " Thy lot or portion of life," said 
the Caliph Ali, " is seeking after thee ; therefore be 
at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on 
these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect 
for numbers. The political parties meet in numer- 
ous conventions ; the greater the concourse, and 
with each new uproar of announcement, — The 
delegation from Essex ! The Democrats from New 
Hampshire ! The Whigs of Maine ! — the young 
patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new 
thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the 
reformers summon conventions, and vote and re- 
solve in multitude. Not so, O friends, will the God 
deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method 
precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off 
all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see 
him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by 



Emerson 273 

every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better 
than a town ? Ask nothing of men, and in the end- 
less mutation, thou only firm column must presently 
appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He 
who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak 
because he has looked for good out of him and 
elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself 
unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights 
himself, stands in the erect position, commands his 
limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands 
on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on 
his head. 

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gam- 
ble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel 
rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, 
and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of 
God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast 
chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter 
out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, 
a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the 
return of your absent friend, or some other favor- 
able event, raises your spirits, and you think good 
days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. 
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing 
can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 



18 



VIII 
MACAULAY 



MACAULAY: 

THE RHETORICIAN 

IT has been the fashion in these later days to 
depreciate Macaulay. " A mere rhetori- 
cian " has become almost a cant word in 
connection w^% him. Yet in his day he had a 
more decided and obvious influence on the style 
of young men of all conditions than any other 
writer of the nineteenth century. 

Macaulay' s style is the style of the orator 
adapted to the purposes of the essay writer. He 
is above all clear and simple. His ideas are 
neither many nor profound, but they are impor- 
tant of their kind. His special merit is that he 
illustrates his thought with all the arts of elo- 
quence. His special rhetorical weapon is antith- 
esis and the balanced-sentence structure. This 
has a simple cadence that readily catches and 
charms the ear. There is in it not only cadence, 
but movement, vivacity, and inspiration. We see 
how the hearer may be swept onward to almost 
any conclusion by the logical succession of the 
thoughts coupled with the sweep of the orator's 
magnetism. The art of eloquence is a fine one, 
and one well worth cultivating. It was the art 
made so famous by the speakers in the Athenian 



278 Best English Essays 

agora, and it is to that art wholly that Aristotle's 
treatise on rhetoric is devoted. 

Macaulay's methods of adapting the peculiar 
gifts of the public speaker to written prose are 
simple. First, the ideas are arranged in logical 
order, one leading up to and preparing the way 
for the next, so that the most cursory reader can- 
not fail to perceive the connection, and he who 
runs may read. Then all facts and conclusions 
are stated vividly by means of sf \rp contrasts, 
and each important point is repeated in many dif- 
ferent ways until the reader has been forced by 
the mere reading of the words to take sufficient 
time to let it sink into his mind. The art of pro- 
portioning the time and attention to be given to 
each essential point is one which the orator under- 
stands in perfection, but which the writer who is 
not constantly thinking of his audience usually 
fails to master. It is nevertheless one of the most 
important acquirements for every writer who 
wishes to be effective. In this especially Macau- 
lay is our most useful model. 



THE PURITANS 
(Essay on Milton) 

WE would speak first of the Puritans, the most 
remarkable body of men, perhaps, which 
the world has ever produced. The odious and ridic- 
ulous parts of their character lie on the surface. He 



Macaulay 279 

that runs may read them; nor have there been 
wanting attentive and maHcious observers to point 
them out. For many years after the Restoration, 
they were the theme of unmeasured invective and 
derision. They were exposed to the utmost Hcen- 
tiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time 
when the press and the stage were most Hcentious. 
They were not men of letters ; they were, as a body, 
unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and 
the public would not take them under its protection. 
They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, 
to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. 
The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour 
aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their 
long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural 
phrases which they introduced on every occasion, 
their contempt of human learning, their detestation 
of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the 
laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone 
that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And 
he who approaches this subject should carefully 
guard against the influence of that potent ridicule 
which has already misled so many excellent writers. 

" Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio 
Che mortali perigli in se contiene : 
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." 

Those who roused the people to resistance, who 
directed their measures through a long series of 
eventful years, who formed, out of the most un- 
promising materials, the finest army that Europe 
had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, 
and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of 



28o Best English Essays 

domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of 
England terrible to every nation on the face of the 
earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their ab- 
surdities were mere external badges, like the signs 
of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret 
that these badges were not more attractive. We 
regret that a body to whose courage and talents 
mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not 
the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the 
adherents of Charles the First, or the easy good- 
breeding for which the court of Charles the Second 
was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, 
we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the 
specious caskets which contain only the Death's 
head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden 
chest which conceals the treasure. 

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived 
a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of 
superior beings and eternal interests. Not content 
with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling 
Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to 
the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing 
was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too 
minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, 
was with them the great end of existence. They 
rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage 
which other sects substituted for the pure worship 
of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses 
of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they as- 
pired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and 
to commune with him face to face. Hence origi- 
nated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. 
The difference between the greatest and the meanest 
of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with 



Macaulay 281 

the boundless interval which separated the whole 
race from him on whom their own eyes were con- 
stantly fixed. They recognised no title to supe- 
riority but his favour ; and, confident of that favour, 
they despised all the accomplishments and all the 
dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted 
with the works of philosophers and poets, they were 
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names 
were not found in the registers of heralds, they were 
recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were 
not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, 
legions of ministering angels had charge over them. 
Their palaces were houses not made with hands ; 
their diadems crowns of glory which should never 
fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles 
and priests, they looked down with contempt: for 
they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious 
treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, 
nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests 
by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very 
meanest of them was a being to whose fate a myste- 
rious and terrible importance belonged, on whose 
slightest action the spirits of light and darkness 
looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, 
before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a 
felicity which should continue when heaven and 
earth should have passed away. Events which 
short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, 
had been ordained on his account. For his sake 
empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For 
his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by 
the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the 
prophet. He had been wrested by no common 
deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He 



a82 Best English Essays 

had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, 
by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him 
that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had 
been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature 
had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. 
Thus the Puritan was made up of two different 
men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, grati- 
tude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, 
sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before 
his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his 
king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with 
convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half- 
maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He 
heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers 
of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, 
or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. 
Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the 
sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he 
cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid 
his face from him. But when he took his seat in 
the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tem- 
pestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible 
trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the 
godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing 
from them but their groans and their whining 
hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little 
reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall 
of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics 
brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of 
judgment and an immutability of purpose which 
some writers have thought inconsistent with their 
religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary 
effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one 
subject made them tranquil on every other. One 



Macaulay 283 

overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity 
and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its 
terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their 
smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sor- 
rows, but not for the things of this world. Enthu- 
siasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their 
minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and 
raised them above the influence of danger and of 
corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pur- 
sue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. 
They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's 
iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and tramp- 
ling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, 
but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, 
insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not 
to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood 
by any barrier. 

Such we believe to have been the character of the 
Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their man- 
ners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic 
habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their 
minds was often injured by straining after things 
too high for mortal reach : and we know that, in 
spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell 
into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance 
and extravagant austerity, that they had their an- 
chorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their 
De Montforts, their Dominies and their Escobars. 
Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consider- 
ation, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, 
a wise, an honest, and an useful body. 



^ Macaulay's criticisms of Croker's editorial work are omitted, 
but notliing else. 



284 Best English Essays 

BOSWELL'S "LIFE OF JOHNSON'' 

THE " Life of Johnson " is assuredly a great, 
a very great work. Homer is not more 
decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is 
not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demos- 
thenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, 
than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has 
no second. He has distanced all his competitors 
so decidedly that it is not worth while to place 
them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere. 

We are not sure that there is in the whole history 
of the human intellect so strange a phsenomenon as 
this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived 
have written biography. Boswell was one of the 
smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them 
all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his 
own account or to the united testimony of all who 
knew him, a man of the meanest and feeblest intel- 
lect. Johnson described him as a fellow who had 
missed his only chance of immortality by not having 
been alive when the "Dunciad" was written. Beau- 
clerk used his name as a proverbial expression for 
a bore. He was the laughing-stock of the whole of 
that brilliant society which has owed to him the 
greater part of its fame. He was always laying 
himself at the feet of some eminent man, and beg- 
ging to be spit upon and trampled upon. He was 
always earning some ridiculous nickname, and then 
" binding it as a crown unto him," not merely in 
metaphor, but literally. He exhibited himself, at 
the Shakespeare Jubilee, to all the crowd which 
filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard round his 
hat bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In 



Macaulay 285 

his '* Tour," he proclaimed to all the world that at 
Edinburgh he was known by the appellation of 
Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent, shallow 
and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family 
pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of 
a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, 
an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of 
London, so curious to know every body who was 
talked about, that, Tory and high Churchman as 
he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for 
an introduction to Tom Paine, so vain of the most 
childish distinctions, that when he had been to 
court, he drove to the office where his book was 
printing without changing his clothes, and sum- 
moned all the printer's devils to admire his new 
ruffles and sword ; such was this man, and such he 
was content and proud to be. Everything which 
another man would have hidden, everything the 
publication of which would have made another man 
hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous 
exultation to his weak and diseased mind. What 
silly things he said, what bitter retorts he provoked, 
how at one place he was troubled with evil pre- 
sentiments which came to nothing, how at another 
place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read 
the prayerbook and took a hair of the dog that had 
bitten him, how he went to see men hanged and 
came away maudlin, how he added five hundred 
pounds to the fortune of one of his babies because 
she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he 
was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the 
sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a 
child, how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one even- 
ing and how much his merriment annoyed the 
ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of 



286 Best English Essays 

Argyle and with what stately contempt she put down 
his impertinence, how Colonel Macleod sneered to 
his face at his impudent obtrusiveness, how his 
father and the very wife of his bosom laughed and 
fretted at his fooleries; all these things he pro- 
claimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects 
for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices 
of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his 
hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air, 
he displayed with a cool self-complacency, a perfect 
unconsciousness that he was making a fool of him- 
self, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in 
the whole history of mankind. He has used many 
people ill; but assuredly he has used nobody so ill 
as himself. 

That such a man should have written one of the 
best books in the world is strange enough. But 
this is not all. Many persons who have conducted 
themselves foolishly in active life, and whose con- 
versation has indicated no superior powers of mind, 
have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very 
justly described by one of his contemporaries as 
an inspired idiot, and by another as a being 

" Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." 

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His 
blunders would not come in amiss among the stories 
of Hierocles. But these men attained literary emi- 
nence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained 
it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been 
a great fool, he would never have been a great 
writer. Without all the qualities which made him 
the jest and the torment of those among whom he 
lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, 
the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to 



Macaulay 287 

all reproof, he never could have produced so ex- 
cellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servi- 
tude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity 
and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion 
who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hos- 
pitality by the basest violation of confidence, a man 
without delicacy, without shame, without sense 
enough to know when he was hurting the feelings 
of others or when he was exposing himself to 
derision ; and because he was all this, he has, in 
an important department of literature, immeasur- 
ably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, 
Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson. 

Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to 
eminence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. 
There is not in all his books a single remark of 
his own on literature, politics, religion, or society, 
which is not either commonplace or absurd. His 
dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave- 
trade, and on the entailing of landed estates, may 
serve as examples. To say that these passages are 
sophistical would be to pay them an extravagant 
compHment. They have no pretence to argument, 
or even to meaning. He has reported innumerable 
observations made by himself in the course of con- 
versation. Of those observations we do not remem- 
ber one which is above the intellectual capacity of 
a boy of fifteen. He has printed many of his own 
letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or 
twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those 
things which are generally considered as making 
a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He 
had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive 
memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of 



288 Best English Essays 

sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have 
sufficed to make him conspicuous ; but because 
he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they 
have made him immortal. 

Those parts of his book which, considered ab- 
stractedly, are most utterly worthless, are delightful 
when we read them as illustrations of the character 
of the writer. Bad in themselves, they are good 
dramatically, like the nonsense of Justice Shallow, 
the clipped Enghsh of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced 
consonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell 
is the most candid. Other men who have pretended 
to lay open their own hearts, Rousseau, for ex- 
ample, and Lord Byron, have evidently written with 
a constant view to effect, and are to be then most 
distrusted when they seem to be most sincere. 
There is scarcely any man who would not rather 
accuse himself of great crimes and of dark and 
tempestuous passions than proclaim all his little 
vanities and wild fancies. It would be easier to 
find a person who would avow actions like those of 
C^sar Borgia or Danton, than one who would 
publish a day dream like those of Alnaschar and 
Malvolio. Those weaknesses which most men keep 
covered up in the most secret places of the mind, 
not to be disclosed to the eye of friendship or of 
love, were precisely the weaknesses which Boswell 
paraded before all the world. He was perfectly 
frank, because the weakness of his understanding 
and the tumult of his spirits prevented him from 
knowing when he made himself ridiculous. His 
book resembles nothing so much as the conver- 
sation of the inmates of the Palace of Truth. 

His fame is great ; and it will, we have no doubt, 



Macaulay 289 

be lasting; but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and 
indeed marvellously resembles infamy. We remem- 
ber no other case in which the world has made so 
great a distinction between a book and its author. 
In general, the book and the author are considered 
as one.- To admire the book is to admire the author. 
The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the 
only exception, to this rule. His work is universally 
allowed to be interesting, instructive, eminently 
original: yet it has brought him nothing but con- 
tempt. All the world reads it, all the world delights 
in it: yet we do not remember ever to have read 
or ever to have heard any expression of respect 
and admiration for the man to whom we owe so 
much instruction and amusement. While edition 
after edition of his book was coming forth, his son, 
as Mr. Croker tells us, was ashamed of it, and 
hated to hear it mentioned. This feeling was natu- 
ral and reasonable. Sir Alexander saw that in 
proportion to the celebrity of the work, was the 
degradation of the author. The very editors of 
this unfortunate gentleman's books have forgotten 
their allegiance, and, like those Puritan casuists who 
took arms by the authority of the king against his 
person, have attacked the writer while doing hom- 
age to the writings. Mr. Croker, for example, has 
published two thousand five hundred notes on the 
life of Johnson, and yet scarcely ever mentions the 
biographer whose performance he has taken such 
pains to illustrate, without some expression of 
contempt. 

An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not. 
Yet the malignity of the most malignant satirist 
could scarcely cut deeper than his thoughtless lo- 

19 



^go Best English Essays 

quacity. Having himself no sensibility to derision 
and contempt, he took it for granted that all others 
were equally callous. He was not ashamed to 
exhibit himself to the whole world as a common 
spy, a common tattler, a humble companion without 
the excuse of poverty, and to tell a hundred stories 
of his own pertness and folly, and of the insults 
which his pertness and folly brought upon him. 
It was natural that he should show little discretion 
in cases in which the feelings or the honour of 
others might be concerned. No man, surely, ever 
published such stories respecting persons whom he 
professed to love and revere. He would infallibly 
have made his hero as contemptible as he has made 
himself, had not his hero really possessed some 
moral and intellectual qualities of a very high order. 
The best proof that Johnson was really an extraordi- 
nary man is that his character, instead of being 
degraded, has, on the whole, been decidedly raised 
by a work in which all his vices and weaknesses 
are exposed more unsparingly than they ever were 
exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick. 

Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his 
fame and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, 
is better known to us than any other man in history. 
Every thing about him, his coat, his wig, his figure, 
his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's dance, his roll- 
ing walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which 
too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his 
insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with 
plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick 
of touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious 
practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, 
his morning slumbers, his midnight disputations, 



Macaulay 291 

his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his 
puffings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, 
his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, 
his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates, 
old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat 
Hodge and the negro Frank, all are as famil- 
iar to us as the objects by which we have been 
surrounded from childhood. But we have no 
minute information respecting those years of John- 
son's life during which his character and his man- 
ners became immutably fixed. We know him, not 
as he was known to the men of his own generation, 
but as he was known to men whose father he might 
have been. That celebrated club of which he was 
the most distinguished member contained few per- 
sons who could remember a time when his fame 
was not fully established and his habits completely 
formed. He had made himself a name in literature 
while Reynolds and the Wartons were still boys. 
He was about twenty years older than Burke, Gold- 
smith, and Gerard Hamilton, about thirty years 
older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, and Langton, and 
about forty years older than Lord Stowell, Sir 
William Jones, and Windham. Boswell and Mrs. 
Thrale, the two writers from whom we derive most 
of our knowledge respecting him, never saw him 
till long after he was fifty years old, till most of 
his great works had become classical, and till the 
pension bestowed on him by the Crown had placed 
him above poverty. Of those eminent men who 
were his most intimate associates towards the close 
of his life, the only one, as far as we remember, 
who knew him during the first ten or twelve years 
of his residence in the capital, was David Garrick; 



292 Best English Essays 

and it does not appear that, during those years, 
David Garrick saw much of his fellow-townsman. 

Johnson came up to London precisely at the time 
when the condition of a man of letters was most 
miserable and degraded. It was a dark night be- 
tween two sunny days. The age of patronage had 
passed away. The age of general curiosity and 
intelligence had not arrived. The number of 
readers is at present so great that a popular author 
may subsist in comfort and opulence on the profits 
of his works. In the reigns of William the Third, 
of Anne, and of George the First, even such men 
as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have been 
able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their 
writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand 
for literature was, at the close of the seventeenth 
and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
more than made up by artificial encouragement, by 
a vast system of bounties and premiums. There 
was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of 
literary merit were so splendid, at which men who 
could write well found such easy admittance into 
the most distinguished society, and to the highest 
honours of the state. The chiefs of both the great 
parties into which the kingdom was divided patron- 
ised literature with emulous munificence. Con- 
greve, when he had scarcely attained his majority, 
was rewarded for his first comedy with places which 
made him independent for life. Smith, though his 
Hippolytus and Phaedra failed, would have been 
consoled with three hundred a year but for his own 
folly. Rowe was not only Poet Laureate, but also 
land-surveyor of the customs in the port of London, 
clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, and sec- 



Macaulay 293 

retary of the Presentations to the Lord Chancellor. 
Hughes was secretary to the Commissions of the 
Peace. Ambrose Philips was judge of the Preroga- 
tive Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of 
Appeals and of the Board of Trade. Newton was 
Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior were em- 
ployed in embassies of high dignity and importance. 
Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a silk 
mercer, became a secretary of legation at five-and- 
twenty. It was to a poem on the " Death of Charles 
the Second," and to the " City and Country Mouse," 
that Montague owed his introduction into public life, 
his earldom, his garter, and his Auditorship of the 
Exchequer. Swift, but for the unconquerable preju- 
dice of the queen, would have been a bishop. Ox- 
ford, with his white staff in his hand, passed through 
the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when 
that ingenious writer deserted the Whigs. Steele 
was a commissioner of stamps and a member of Par- 
liament. Arthur Mainwaring was a commissioner 
of the customs, and auditor of the imprest. Tickell 
was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. 
Addison was secretary of state. 

This liberal patronage was brought into fashion, 
as it seems, by the magnificent Dorset, almost the 
only noble versifier in the court of Charles the 
Second who possessed talents for composition which 
were independent of the aid of a coronet.* Mon- 
tague owed his elevation to the favour of Dorset, 
and imitated through the whole course of his life 
the liberality to which he was himself so greatly 
indebted. The Tory leaders, Harley and Boling- 
broke in particular, vied with the chiefs of the Whig 
party in zeal for the encouragement of letters. But 



294 ^^st English Essays 

soon after the accession of the house of Hanover 
a change took place. The supreme power passed 
to a man who cared little for poetry or eloquence. 
The importance of the House of Commons was con- 
stantly on the increase. The government was under 
the necessity of bartering for Parliamentary support 
much of that patronage which had been employed in 
fostering literary merit; and Walpole was by no 
means inclined to divert any part of the fund of cor- 
ruption to purposes which he considered as idle. 
He had eminent talents for government and for 
debate. But he had paid little attention to books, 
and felt little respect for authors. One of the coarse 
jokes of his friend, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, 
was far more pleasing to him than Thomson's 
" Seasons " or Richardson's " Pamela." He had ob- 
served that some of the distinguished writers whom 
the favour of Halifax had turned into statesmen had 
been mere incumbrances to their party, dawdlers in 
office, and mutes in Parliament. During the whole 
course of his administration, therefore, he scarcely 
befriended a single man of genius. The best writers 
of the age gave all their support to the opposition, 
and contributed to excite that discontent which, 
after plunging the nation into a foolish and unjust 
war, overthrew the minister to make room for men 
less able and equally immoral. The opposition 
could reward its eulogists with little more than 
promises and caresses. St. James's would give 
nothing: Leicester house had nothing to give. 

Thus, at the time when Johnson commenced his 
literary career, a writer had little to hope from the 
patronage of powerful individuals. The patronage 
of the public did not yet furnish the means of com- 



Macau lay 295 

fortable subsistence. The prices paid by booksellers 
to authors were so low that a man of considerable 
talents and unremitting industry could do little 
more than provide for the day which was passing 
over him. The lean kine had eaten up the fat kine. 
The thin and withered ears had devoured the good 
ears. The season of rich harvests was over, and the 
period of famine had begun. All that is squalid and 
miserable might now be summed up in the word 
Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like 
a scarecrow, familiar with compters and spunging- 
houses, and perfectly qualified to decide on the com- 
parative merits of the Common Side in the King's 
Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. 
Even the poorest pitied him ; and they well might 
pity him. For if their condition was equally abject, 
their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense 
of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four 
pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out 
of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of 
a ditcher, to be hunted by bailififs from one haunt 
of beggary and pestilence to another, from Grub 
Street to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's 
Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's church, to 
sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a 
glass-house in December, to die in an hospital and 
to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more 
than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years 
earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of 
the Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in 
Parliament, and would have been entrusted with 
embassies to the High Allies ; who, if he had lived 
in our time, would have found encouragement 
scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in 
Paternoster Row. 



296 Best English Essays 

As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so 
every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The 
literary character, assuredly, has always had its 
share of faults, vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility. 
To these faults were now superadded the faults 
which are commonly found in men whose livelihood 
is precarious, and whose principles are exposed to 
the trial of severe distress. All the vices of the 
gambler and of the beggar were blended with those 
of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery 
of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the 
blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a 
manner that it was almost certain to be abused. 
After months of starvation and despair, a full third 
night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket 
of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. 
He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images 
of which his mind had been haunted while he was 
sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at 
the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns 
soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars. 
Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a 
crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-laced 
hats and waistcoats ; sometimes lying in bed because 
their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper 
cravats because their linen was in pawn ; sometimes 
drinking Champagne and Tokay with Betty Care- 
less ; sometimes standing at the window of an 
eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up the 
scent of what they could not afford to taste; they 
knew luxury ; they knew beggary ; but they never 
knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. 
They looked on a regular and frugal life with the 
same aversion which an old gipsy or a Mohawk 



Macaulay 297 

hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the 
restraints and securities of civilised communities. 
They were as untamable, as much wedded to their 
desolate freedom, as the wild ass. They could no 
more be broken in to the offices of social man than 
the unicorn could be trained to serve and abide by 
the crib. It was well if they did not, like beasts of 
a still fiercer race, tear the hands which ministered 
to their necessities. To assist them was impossible ; 
and the most benevolent of mankind at length be- 
came weary of giving relief which was dissipated 
with the wildest profusion as soon as it had been 
received. If a sum was bestowed on the wretched 
adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, might 
have supplied him for six months, it was instantly 
spent in strange freaks of sensuality, and, before 
forty-eight hours had elapsed, the poet was again 
pestering all his acquaintance for twopence to get 
a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cook-shop. 
If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, 
those houses were forthwith turned into bagnios 
and taverns. All order was destroyed ; all business 
was suspended. The most good-natured host began 
to repent of his eagerness to serve a man of genius 
in distress when he heard his guest roaring for fresh 
punch at five o'clock in the morning. 

A few eminent writers were more fortunate. 
Pope had been raised above poverty by the active 
patronage which, in his youth, both the great politi- 
cal parties had extended to his " Homer." Young 
had received the only pension ever bestowed, to the 
best of our recollection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as 
the reward of mere literary merit. One or two of 
the many poets who attached themselves to the oppo- 



^98 Best English Essays 

sition, Thomson in particular and Mallet, obtained, 
after much severe suffering, the means of subsist- 
ence from their political friends. Richardson, hke 
a man of sense, kept his shop; and his shop kept 
him, which his novels, admirable as they are, would 
scarcely have done. But nothing could be more 
deplorable than the state even of the ablest men, 
who at that time depended for subsistence on their 
writings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and Thomson, 
were certainly four of the most distinguished per- 
sons that England produced during the eighteenth 
century. It is well known that they were all four 
arrested for debt. 

Into calamities and difficulties such as these John- 
son plunged in his twenty-eighth year. From that 
time, till he was three or four and fifty, we 'have 
little information respecting him; little, we mean, 
compared with the full and accurate information 
which we possess respecting his proceedings and 
habits towards the close of his life. He emerged at 
length from cock-lofts and sixpenny ordinaries into 
the society of the polished and the opulent. His 
fame was established. A pension sufficient for his 
wants had been conferred on him : and he came 
forth to astonish a generation with which he had 
almost as little in common as with Frenchmen or 
Spaniards. 

In his early years he had occasionally seen the 
great ; but he had seen them as a beggar. He now 
came among them as a companion. The demand 
for amusement and instruction had, during the 
course of twenty years, been gradually increasing. 
The price of literary labour had risen; and those 
rising men of letters with whom Johnson was hence- 



Macaulay 299 

forth to associate, were for the most part persons 
widely different from those who had walked about 
with him all night in the streets for want of a lodg- 
ing*. Burke, Robertson, the Wartons, Gray, Mason, 
Gibbon, Adam Smith, Beattie, Sir William Jones, 
Goldsmith, and Churchill, were the most distin- 
guished writers of what may be called the second 
generation of the Johnsonian age. Of these men 
Churchill was the only one in whom we can trace 
the stronger lineaments of that character which, 
when Johnson first came up to London, was com- 
mon among authors. Of the rest, scarcely any had 
felt the pressure of severe poverty. Almost all had 
been early admitted into the most respectable society 
on an equal footing. They were men of quite a 
different species from the dependents of Curll and 
Osborne. 

Johnson came among them the solitary specimen 
of a past age, the last survivor of the genuine race 
of Grub Street hacks ; the last of that generation of 
authors whose abject misery and whose dissolute 
manners had furnished inexhaustible matter to the 
satirical genius of Pope. From nature he had re- 
ceived an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, 
and an irritable temper. The manner in which the 
earlier years of his manhood had been passed had 
given to his demeanour, and even to his moral char- 
acter, some peculiarities appalling to the civilised 
beings who were the companions of his old age. 
The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenli- 
ness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, 
interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his 
strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, 
his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant 



300 Best English Essays 

rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners 
in society, made him, in the opinion of those with 
whom he lived during the last twenty years of his 
life, a complete original. An original he was, un- 
doubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed 
full information concerning those who shared his 
early hardships, we should probably find that what 
we call his singularities of manner were, for the 
most part, failings which he had in common with 
the class to which he belonged. He ate at Streatham 
Park as he had been used to eat behind the screen 
at St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show 
his ragged clothes. He ate as it was natural that a 
man should eat, who, during a great part of his life, 
had passed the morning in doubt whether he should 
have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early 
life had accustomed him to bear privation with for- 
titude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation. 
He could fast ; but, when he did not fast, he tore 
his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swell- 
ing on his forehead, and the perspiration running 
down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine. But 
when he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large 
tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms 
of that same moral disease which raged with such 
deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse. 
The roughness and violence which he showed in 
society were to be expected from a man whose tem- 
per, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the 
bitterest calamities, by the want of meat, of fire, and 
of clothes, by the importunity of creditors, by the 
insolence of booksellers, by the derision of fools, 
by the insincerity of patrons, by that bread which 
is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are 



Macaulay 301 

the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope 
which makes the heart sick. Through all these 
things the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant had 
struggled manfully up to eminence and command. 
It was natural that, in the exercise of his power, 
he should be "eo immitior, quia toleraverat," that, 
though his heart was undoubtedly generous and 
humane, his demeanour in society should be harsh 
and despotic. For severe distress he had sympathy, 
and not only sympathy, but munificent relief. But 
for the suffering which a harsh word inflicts upon 
a delicate mind he had no pity ; for it was a kind of 
suffering which he could scarcely conceive. He 
would carry home on his shoulders a sick and starv- 
ing girl from the streets. He turned his house into 
a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old crea- 
tures who could find no other asylum ; nor could 
all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his 
benevolence. But the pangs of wounded vanity 
seemed to him ridiculous ; and he scarcely felt suffi- 
cient compassion even for the pangs of wounded 
affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp 
misery, that he was not affected by paltry vexations ; 
and he seemed to think that every body ought to be 
as much hardened to those vexations as himself. He 
was angry with Boswell for complaining of a head- 
ache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the 
dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These 
were, in his phrase, " foppish lamentations," which 
people ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so 
full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because 
the " Good-natured Man " had failed, inspired him 
with no pity. Though his own health was not good, 
he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuni- 



302 Best English Essays 

ary losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely 
to beggary, moved him very little. People whose 
hearts had been softened by prosperity might weep, 
he said, for such events; but all that could be ex- 
pected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was 
not much moved even by the spectacle of Lady 
Tavistock dying of a broken heart for the loss of 
her lord. Such grief he considered as a luxury re- 
served for the idle and the wealthy. A washer- 
woman, left a widow with nine small children, 
would not have sobbed herself to death. 

A person who troubled himself so little about 
small or sentimental grievances was not likely to 
be very attentive to the feelings of others in the 
ordinary intercourse of society. He could not under- 
stand how a sarcasm or a reprimand could make any 
man really unhappy. *' My dear doctor," said he 
to Goldsmith, " what harm does it do to a man to 
call him Holof ernes ? " " Pooh, ma'am," he ex- 
claimed to Mrs. Carter, " who is the worse for 
being talked of uncharitably ? " Politeness has been 
well defined as benevolence in small things. John- 
son was impolite, not because he wanted benevo- 
lence, but because small things appeared smaller 
to him than to people who had never known what 
it was to live for fourpence halfpenny a day. 

The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was 
the union of great powers with low prejudices. If 
we judged of him by the best parts of his mind, we 
should place him almost as high as he was placed 
by the idolatry of Boswell ; if by the worst parts of 
his mind, we should place him even below Boswell 
himself. Where he was not under the influence of 
some strange scruple, or some domineering passion. 



Macaulay 303 

which prevented him from boldly and fairly inves- 
tigating a subject, he was a wary and acute reasoner, 
a Httle too much inclined to scepticism, and a little 
too fond of paradox. No man was less likely to be 
imposed upon by fallacies in argument, or by ex- 
aggerated statements of fact. But if, while he was 
beating down sophisms and exposing false testi- 
mony, some childish prejudices, such as would ex- 
cite laughter in a well-managed nursery, came across 
him, he was smitten as if by enchantment. His 
mind dwindled away under the spell from gigantic 
elevation to dwarfish littleness. Those who had 
lately been admiring its amplitude and its force 
were now as much astonished at its strange narrow- 
ness and feebleness as the fisherman in the Arabian 
tale, when he saw the Genie, whose stature had 
overshadowed the whole sea-coast, and whose might 
seamed equal to a contest with armies, contract him- 
self to the dimensions of his small prison, and He 
there the helpless slave of the charm of Solomon. 

Johnson was in the habit of sifting with extreme 
severity the evidence for all stories which were 
merely odd. But when they were not only odd but 
miraculous, his severity relaxed. He began to be 
credulous precisely at the point where the most 
credulous people begin to be sceptical. It is curious 
to observe, both in his writings and in his conver- 
sation, the contrast between the disdainful manner 
in which he rejects unauthenticated anecdotes, even 
when they are consistent with the general laws of 
nature, and the respectful manner in which he men- 
tions the wildest stories relating to the invisible 
world. A man who told him of a water-spout, or 
a meteoric stone, generally had the lie direct given 



304 Best English Essays 

him for his pains. A man who told him of a pre- 
diction or a dream wonderfully accomplished was 
sure of a courteous hearing. " Johnson," observed 
Hogarth, *' like King David, says in his haste that 
all men are Hars." " His incredulity," says Mrs. 
Thrale, *' amounted almost to disease." She tells 
us how he browbeat a gentleman who gave him an 
account of a hurricane in the West Indies, and a 
poor quaker who related some strange circumstance 
about the red-hot balls fired at the siege of Gibraltar. 
" It is not so. It cannot be true. Don't tell that 
story again. You cannot think how poor a figure 
you make in telling it." He once said, half jest- 
ingly, we suppose, that for six months he refused 
to credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, and 
that he still believed the extent of the calamity to 
be greatly exaggerated. Yet he related with a grave 
face how old Mr. Cave of St. John's Gate saw a 
ghost, and how this ghost was something of a 
shadowy being. He went himself on a ghost-hunt 
to Cock Lane, and was angry with John Wesley for 
not following up another scent of the same kind 
with proper spirit and perseverance. He rejects 
the Celtic genealogies and poems without the least 
hesitation ; yet he declares himself willing to believe 
the stories of the second sight. If he had examined 
the claims of the Highland seers with half the 
severity with which he sifted the evidence for the 
genuineness of Fingal, he would, we suspect, have 
come away from Scotland with a mind fully made 
up. In his " Lives of the Poets " we find that he is 
unwilling to give credit to the accounts of Lord 
Roscommon's early proficiency in his studies: but 
he tells with great solemnity an absurd romance 



Macaulay 305 

about some intelligence preternaturally impressed 
on the mind of that nobleman. He avows himself 
to be in great doubt about the truth of the story, 
and ends by warning his readers not wholly to slight 
such impressions. 

Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are 
worthy of a liberal and enlarged mind. He could 
discern clearly enough the folly and meanness of all 
bigotry except his own. When he spoke of the 
scruples of the Puritans, he spoke like a person who 
had really obtained an insight into the divine philos- 
ophy of the New Testament, and who considered 
Christianity as a noble scheme of government, tend- 
ing to promote the happiness and to elevate the 
moral nature of man. The horror which the sec- 
taries felt for cards, Christmas ale, plum-porridge, 
mince-pies, and dancing bears, excited his contempt. 
To the arguments urged by some very worthy people 
against showy dress he replied with admirable 
sense and spirit, " Let us not be found, when our 
Master calls us, stripping the lace off our waist- 
coats, but the spirit of contention from our souls 
and tongues. Alas ! sir, a man who cannot get to 
heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither 
the sooner in a gray one." Yet he was himself under 
the tyranny of scruples as unreasonable as those of 
Hudibras or Ralpho, and carried his zeal for cere- 
monies and for ecclesiastical dignities to lengths al- 
together inconsistent with reason or with Christian 
charity. He has gravely noted down in his diary 
that he once committed the sin of drinking coffee on 
Good Friday. In Scotland, he thought it his duty 
to pass several months without joining in public 
worship, solely because the ministers of the kirk 



^66 Best English Essays 

had not been ordained by bishops. His mode of 
estimating the piety of his neighbours was some- 
what singular. " Campbell," said he, " is a good 
man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in 
the inside of a church for many years : but he never 
passes a church without pulling off his hat; this 
shows he has good principles." Spain and Sicily 
must surely contain many pious robbers and well- 
principled assassins. Johnson could easily see that 
a roundhead who named all his children after 
Solomon's singers, and talked in the House of 
Commons about seeking the Lord, might be an un- 
principled villain, whose religious mummeries only 
aggravated his guilt. But a man who took off his 
hat when he passed a church episcopally consecrated 
must be a good man, a pious man, a man of good 
principles. Johnson could easily see that those per- 
sons who looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat as 
sinful, deemed most ignobly of the attributes of 
God and of the ends of revelation. But with what 
a storm of invective he would have overwhelmed 
any man who had blamed him for celebrating the 
redemption of mankind with sugarless tea and but- 
terless buns ! 

Nobody spoke more contemptuously of the cant 
of patriotism. Nobody saw more clearly the error 
of those who regarded liberty, not as a means, but 
as an end, and who proposed to themselves, as the 
object of their pursuit, the prosperity of the state 
as distinct from the prosperity of the individuals 
who compose the state. His calm and settled 
opinion seems to have been that forms of govern- 
ment have little or no influence on the happiness of 
society. This opinion, erroneous as it is, ought at 



Macaulay 307 

least to have preserved him from all Intemperance 
on political questions. It did not, however, pre- 
serve him from the lowest, fiercest, and most absurd 
extravagances of party spirit, from rants which, in 
every thing but the diction, resembled those of 
Squire Western. He was, as a politician, half ice 
and half fire. On the side of his intellect he was a 
mere Pococurante, far too apathetic about public 
affairs, far too sceptical as to the good or evil tend- 
ency of any form of polity. His passions, on the 
contrary, were violent even to slaying against all 
who leaned to Whiggish principles. The well- 
known lines which he inserted in Goldsmith's 
** Traveller " express what seems to have been his 
deliberate judgment: 

" How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure 1 " 

He had previously put expressions very similar into 
the mouth of Rasselas. It is amusing to contrast 
these passages with the torrents of raving abuse 
which he poured forth against the Long Parliament 
and the American Congress. In one of the conver- 
sations reported by Boswell this inconsistency dis- 
plays itself in the most ludicrous manner. 

" Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, '' suggested 
that luxury corrupts a people, and destroys the spirit 
of Hberty. Johnson : ' Sir, that is all visionary. 
I would not give half a guinea to live under one 
form of government rather than another. It is of 
no moment to the happiness of an individual. Sir, 
the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a 
private man. What Frenchman is prevented pass- 



3o8 Best English Essays 

ing his life as he pleases ? ' Sir Adam : * But, sir, 
in the British constitution it is surely of importance 
to keep up a spirit in the people, so as to preserve 
a balance against the crown.' Johnson : ' Sir, I 
perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish 
jealousy of the power of the crown? The crown 
has not power enough.' " 

One of the old philosophers. Lord Bacon tells us, 
used to say that life and death were just the same to 
him. " Why then," said an objector, " do you not 
kill yourself ? " The philosopher answered, '' Be- 
cause it is just the same." If the difference between 
two forms of government be not worth half a 
guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can be 
viler than Toryism, or how the crown can have too 
little power. If the happiness of individuals is not 
afifected by political abuses, zeal for liberty is doubt- 
less ridiculous. But zeal for monarchy must be 
equally so. No person could have been more quick- 
sighted than Johnson to such a contradiction as 
this in the logic of an antagonist. 

The judgments which Johnson passed on books 
were, in his own time, regarded with superstitious 
veneration, and, in our time, are generally treated 
with indiscriminate contempt. They are the judg- 
ments of a strong but enslaved understanding. The 
mind of the critic was hedged round by an unin- 
terrupted fence of prejudices and superstitions. 
Within his narrow limits, he displayed a vigour and 
an activity which ought to have enabled him to clear 
the barrier that confined him. 

How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his 
premises so ably, should assume his premises so 
foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human 



Macau lay 309 

nature. The same inconsistency may be observed 
in the schoolmen of the middle ages. Those writers 
show so much acuteness and force of mind in argu- 
ing on their wretched data, that a modern reader 
is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such 
minds came by such data. Not a flaw in the super- 
structure of the theory which they are rearing es- 
capes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the 
obvious unsoundness of the foundation. It is the 
same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal argu- 
ments are intellectual prodigies, abounding with 
the happiest analogies and the most refined distinc- 
tions. The principles of their arbitrary science being 
once admitted, the statute-book and the reports 
being once assumed as the foundations of reason- 
ing, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters 
of logic. But if a question arises as to the postu- 
lates on which their whole system rests, if they are 
called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims 
of that system which they have passed their lives 
in studying, these very men often talk the language 
of savages or of children. Those who have listened 
to a man of this class in his own court, and who 
have witnessed the skill with which he analyses and 
digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a 
crowd of precedents which at first sight seem con- 
tradictory, scarcely know him again when, a few 
hours later, they hear him speaking on the other 
side of Westminster Hall in his capacity of legis- 
lator. They can scarcely believe that the paltry 
quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of 
coughing, and which do not impose on the plainest 
country gentleman, can proceed from the same 
sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their 



3IO Best English Essays 

admiration under the same roof, and on the same 
day. 

Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, 
not like a legislator. He never examined founda- 
tions where a point was already ruled. His whole 
code of criticism rested on pure assumption, for 
which he sometimes quoted a precedent or an 
authority, but rarely troubled himself to give a 
reason drawn from the nature of things. He took 
it for granted that the kind of poetry which flour- 
ished in his own time, which he had been accus- 
tomed to hear praised from his childhood, and which 
he had himself written with success, was the best 
kind of poetry. In his biographical work he has 
repeatedly laid it down as an undeniable proposi- 
tion that during the latter part of the seventeenth 
century, and the earher part of the eighteenth, Eng- 
lish poetry had been in a constant progress of im- 
provement. Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope, 
had been, according to him, the great reformers. 
He judged of all works of the imagination by the 
standard established among his own contemporaries. 
Though he allowed Homer to have been a greater 
man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the 
" ^neid " a greater poem than the " IHad." Indeed 
he well might have thought so; for he preferred 
Pope's " Iliad " to Homer's. He pronounced that, 
after Hoole's translation of " Tasso," Fairfax's 
would hardly be reprinted. He could see no merit 
in our fine old English ballads, and always spoke 
with the most provoking contempt of Percy's fond- 
ness for them. Of the great original works of 
imagination which appeared during his time, Rich- 
ardson's novels alone excited his admiration. He 



Macaulay 3 1 1 

could see little or no merit in " Tom Jones/* in 
" Gulliver's Travels," or in " Tristram Shandy." To 
Thomson's *' Castle of Indolence " he vouchsafed 
only a line of cold commendation, of commendation 
much colder than what he has bestowed on the 
" Creation " of that portentous bore, Sir. Richard 
Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren ras- 
cal. Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt 
which he felt for the trash of Macpherson was in- 
deed just; but it was, we suspect, just by chance. 
He despised the "Fingal" for the very reason which 
led many men of genius to admire it. He despised 
it, not because it was essentially commonplace, but 
because it had a superficial air of originality. 

He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of com- 
positions fashioned on his own principles. But 
when a deeper philosophy was required, when he 
undertook to pronounce judgment on the works of 
those great minds which ^' yield homage only to 
eternal laws," his failure was ignominious. He 
criticised " Pope's Epitaphs " excellently. But his 
observations on Shakespeare's plays and Milton's 
poems seem to us for the most part as wretched as 
if they had been written by Rymer himself, whom 
we take to have been the worst critic that ever lived. 

Some of Johnson's whims on literary subjects 
can be compared only to that strange nervous feel- 
ing which made him uneasy if he had not touched 
every post between the Mitre tavern and his own 
lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs to 
English epitaphs is an instance. An English epi- 
taph, he said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared 
that he would not pollute the walls of Westminster 
Abbey with an English epitaph on Goldsmith, 



312 Best English Essays 

What reason there can be for celebrating a British 
writer in Latin, which there was not for covering 
the Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscrip- 
tions, or for commemorating the deeds of the heroes 
of Thermopylae in Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are 
utterly unable to imagine. 

On men and manners, at least on the men and 
manners of a particular place and a particular age, 
Johnson had certainly looked with a most observant 
and discriminating eye. His remarks on the edu- 
cation of children, on marriage, on the economy of 
families, on the rules of society, are always striking, 
and generally sound. In his writings, indeed, the 
knowledge of life which he possessed in an eminent 
degree is very imperfectly exhibited. Like those 
unfortunate chiefs of the middle ages who were 
suffocated by their own chain-mail and cloth of 
gold, his maxims perish under that load of words 
which was designed for their defence and their 
ornament. But it is clear from the remains of his 
conversation, that he had more of that homely 
wisdom which nothing but experience and observa- 
tion can give than any writer since the time of Swift. 
If he had been content to write as he talked, he 
might have left books on the practical art of living 
superior to the *' Directions to Servants." 

Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks 
on literature, indicate a mind at least as remarkable 
for narrowness as for strength. He was no master 
of the great science of human nature. He had 
studied, not the genus man, but the species Lon- 
doner. Nobody was ever so thoroughly conversant 
with all the forms of life and all the shades of moral 
and intellectual character which were to be seen 



Macaulay 313 

from Islington to the Thames, and from Hyde- 
Park corner to Mile-end green. But his philosophy- 
stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life 
of England he knew nothing; and he took it for 
granted that every body who lived in the country 
was either stupid or miserable. " Country gentle- 
men," said he, ** must be unhappy ; for they have 
not enough to keep their lives in motion " ; as if all 
those peculiar habits and associations which made 
Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in 
the world to himself had been essential parts of 
human nature. Of remote countries and past times 
he talked with wild and ignorant presumption. 
" The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes," he 
said to Mrs. Thrale, " were a people of brutes, a 
barbarous people." In conversation with Sir Adam 
Ferguson he used similar language. " The boasted 
Athenians," he said, ** were barbarians. The mass 
of every people must be barbarous where there is 
no printing." The fact was this: he saw that a 
Londoner who could not read was a very stupid 
and brutal fellow : he saw that great refinement of 
taste and activity of intellect were rarely found in 
a Londoner who had not read much; and, because 
it was by means of books that people acquired al- 
most all their knowledge in the society with which 
he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the 
strongest and clearest evidence, that the human 
mind can be cultivated by means of books alone. 
An Athenian citizen might possess very few vol- 
umes ; and the largest library to which he had access 
might be much less valuable than Johnson's book- 
case in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass 
every morning in conversation with Socrates, and 



314 Best English Essays 

might hear Pericles speak four or five times every 
month. He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aris- 
tophanes : he walked amid the friezes of Phidias 
and the paintings of Zeuxis : he knew by heart the 
choruses of ^schylus : he heard the rhapsodist at the 
corner of the street reciting the "Shield of Achilles" 
or the " Death of Argus " : he was a legislator, con- 
versant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and 
war: he was a soldier, trained under a liberal and 
generous discipline: he was a judge compelled 
every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. 
These things were in themselves an education, an 
education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form 
exact or profound thinkers, but to give quickness 
to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to 
the expression, and politeness to the manners. All 
this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not 
improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's 
opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who 
made his mark, much such a person as black Frank 
before he went to school, and far inferior to a 
parish clerk or a printer's devil. 

Johnson's friends have allowed that he carried 
to a ridiculous extreme his unjust contempt for 
foreigners. He pronounced the French to be a very 
silly people, much behind us, stupid, ignorant crea- 
tures. And this judgment he formed after having 
been at Paris about a month, during which he would 
not talk French, for fear of giving the natives an ad- 
vantage over him in conversation. He pronounced 
them, also, to be an indelicate people, because a 
French footman touched the sugar with his fingers. 
That ingenious and amusing traveller, M. Simond, 
has defended his countrymen very successfully 



Macaulay 315 

against Johnson's accusation, and has pointed out 
some English practices which, to an impartial spec- 
tator, would seem at least as inconsistent with 
physical cleanliness and social decorum as those 
which Johnson so bitterly reprehended. To the 
sage, as Boswell loves to call him, it never occurred 
to doubt that there must be something eternally and 
immutably good in the usages to which he had been 
accustomed. In fact, Johnson's remarks on society 
beyond the bills of mortality, are generally of much 
the same kind with those of honest Tom Dawson, 
the English footman in Dr. Moore's " Zeluco." 
** Suppose the king of France has no sons, but only 
a daughter, then, when the king dies, this here 
daughter, according to that there law, cannot be 
made queen, but the next near relative, provided he 
is a man, is made king, and not the last king's 
daughter, which, to be sure, is very unjust. The 
French footguards are dressed in blue, and all the 
marching regiments in white, which has a very fool- 
ish appearance for soldiers; and as for blue regi- 
mentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the 
artillery." 

Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him 
to a state of society completely new to him ; and a 
salutary suspicion of his own deficiencies seems on 
that occasion to have crossed his mind for the first 
time. He confessed, in the last paragraph of his 
" Journey," that his thoughts on national manners 
were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of 
one who had passed his time almost wholly in cities. 
This feeling, however, soon passed away. It is re- 
markable that to the last he entertained a fixed con- 
tempt for all those modes of life and those studies 



3i6 Best English Essays 

which tend to emancipate the mind from the preju- 
dices of a particular age or a particular nation. Of 
foreign travel and of history he spoke with the fierce 
and boisterous contempt of ignorance. '' What does 
a man learn by travelling? Is Beauclerk the better 
for travelling? What did Lord Charlemont learn 
in his travels, except that there was a snake in one 
of the pyramids of Egypt ? " History was, in his 
opinion, to use the fine expression of Lord Plunkett, 
an old almanack : historians could, as he conceived, 
claim no higher dignity than that of almanack- 
makers; and his favourite historians were those 
who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no higher dignity. 
He always spoke with contempt of Robertson. 
Hume he would not even read. He affronted one 
of his friends for talking to him about Catiline's 
conspiracy, and declared that he never desired to 
hear of the Punic war again as long as he lived. 

Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect 
our own interests, considered in itself, is no better 
worth knowing than another fact. The fact that 
there is a snake in a pyramid, or the fact that Han- 
nibal crossed the Alps, are in themselves as un- 
profitable to us as the fact that there is a green blind 
in a particular house in Threadneedle Street, or the 
fact that a Mr. Smith comes into the city every 
morning on the top of one of the Blackwall stages. 
But it is certain that those who will not crack the 
shell of history will never get at the kernel. John- 
son, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the kernel 
worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. 
The real use of travelling to distant countries and 
of studying the annals of past times is to preserve 
men from the contraction of mind which those can 



Macaulay 317 

hardly escape whose whole communion is with one 
generation and one neighbourhood, who arrive at 
conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently 
copious, and who therefore constantly confound 
exceptions with rules, and accidents with essential 
properties. In short, the real use of travelling and 
of studying history is to keep men from being what 
Tom Dawson was in fiction, and Samuel Johnson in 
reality. 

Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, ap- 
pears far greater in Boswell's books than in his 
own. His conversation appears to have been quite 
equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to 
them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his 
wit and his sense in forcible and natural expres- 
sions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to 
write for the public, his style became systematically 
vicious. All his books are written in a learned lan- 
guage, in a language which nobody hears from his 
mother or his nurse, in a language in which nobody 
ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love, in 
a language in which nobody ever thinks. It is clear 
that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in 
which he wrote. The expressions which came first 
to his tongue were simple, energetic, and pictur- 
esque. When he wrote for publication, he did his 
sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His 
letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the 
original of that work of which the " Journey to the 
Hebrides " is the translation ; and it is amusing to 
compare the two versions. " When we were taken 
up stairs," says he in one of his letters, " a dirty 
fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us 
was to lie." This incident is recorded in the " Jour- 



3i8 Best English Essays 

ney " as follows : " Out of one of the beds on which 
we were to repose started up, at our entrance, a 
man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Some- 
times Johnson translated aloud. " The Rehearsal," 
he said, very unjustly, " has not wit enough to keep 
it sweet " ; then, after a pause, " it has not vitality 
enough to preserve it from putrefaction." 

Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even 
agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is 
natural. Few readers, for example, would be will- 
ing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of 
Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy 
on the mannerist, which has been adopted on prin- 
ciple, and which can be sustained only by constant 
effort, is always offensive. And such is the man- 
nerism of Johnson. 

The characteristic faults of his style are so 
familiar to all our readers, and have been so often 
burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous to point 
them out. It is well known that he made less use 
than any other eminent writer of those strong plain 
words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, of which 
the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language; 
and that he felt a vicious partiality for terms which, 
long after our own speech had been fixed, were 
borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and which, 
therefore, even when lawfully naturalised, must be 
considered as born ahens, not entitled to rank with 
the king's English. His constant practice of pad- 
ding out a sentence with useless epithets, till it 
became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite, his anti- 
thetical forms of expression, constantly employed 
even where there is no opposition in the ideas ex- 
pressed, his big words wasted on little things, his 



Macaulay 319 

harsh inversions, so widely different from those 
graceful and easy inversions which give variety, 
spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great 
old writers, all these peculiarities have been imitated 
by his admirers and parodied by his assailants, till 
the public has become sick of the subject. 

Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very 
justly, " If you were to write a fable about little 
fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk 
like whales." No man surely ever had so little 
talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he 
wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy- 
hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or 
a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous 
and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy 
Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him 
under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea 
talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor 
of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her recep- 
tion at the country-house of her relations, in such 
terms as these : " I was surprised, after the civilities 
of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure 
and tranquillity which a rural life always promises, 
and, if well conducted, might always afford, a con- 
fused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of 
diligence, by which every face was clouded, and 
every motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla in- 
forms us, that she " had not passed the earlier part 
of life without the flattery of courtship, and the joys 
of triumph; but had danced the round of gaiety 
amidst the murmurs of envy and the gratulations 
of applause, had been attended from pleasure to 
pleasure by the great, the sprightly, and the vain, 
and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequious- 



320 Best English Essays 

ness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity 
of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not 
wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The reader 
may well cry out, with honest Sir Hugh Evans, 
** I like not when a 'oman has a great peard : I 
spy a great peard under her muffler." ^ 

We had something more to say. But our article 
is already too long; and we must close it. We 
would fain part in good humour from the hero, from 
the biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill 
as he has performed his task, has at least this claim 
to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read 
Boswell's book again. As we close it, the club- 
room is before us, and the table on which stands 
the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. 
There are assembled those heads which live for ever 
on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spec- 
tacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton, 
the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming 
smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box and 
Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the 
foreground is that strange figure which is as famil- 
iar to us as the figures of those among whom we 
have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge 
massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the 
brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey 
wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the 
nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the 
eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; 
we see the heavy form rolling ; we hear it puffing ; 
and then comes the " Why, sir ! " and the *' What 

1 It is proper to observe that this passage bears a very close 
resemblance to a passage in the "Rambler" (No. 20). The re- 
semblance may possibly be the effect of unconscious plagiarism. 



Macaulay 321 

then, sir ? " and the " No, sir ! " and the " You don't 
see your way through the question, sir ! " 

What a singular destiny has been that of this 
remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age 
as a classic, and in ours as a companion. To re- 
ceive from his contemporaries that full homage 
which men of genius have in general received only 
from posterity! To be more intimately known to 
posterity than other men are known to their con- 
temporaries ! That kind of fame which is commonly 
the most transient is, in his case, the most durable. 
The reputation of those writings, which he prob- 
ably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; 
while those peculiarities of manner and that care- 
less table-talk the memory of which, he probably 
thought, would die with him, are likely to be re- 
membered as long as the English language is spoken 
in any quarter of the globe. 



THE PERFECT HISTORIAN 
(Essay on History) 

THE perfect historian is he in whose work the 
character and spirit of an age is exhibited in 
miniature. He relates no facts, he attributes no ex- 
pression to his characters, which is not authenticated 
by sufficient testimony. But, by judicious selection, 
rejection, and arrangement, he gives to truth those 
attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In 
his narrative a due subordination is observed : some 
transactions are prominent ; others retire. But the 
scale on which he represents them is increased or 

21 



322 Best English Essays 

diminished, not according to the dignity of the per- 
sons concerned in them, but according to the degree 
in which they elucidate the condition of society and 
the nature of man. He shows us the court, the 
camp, and the senate. But he shows us also the 
nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity 
of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant 
for his notice which is not too insignificant to illus- 
trate the operation of laws, of religion, and of 
education, and to mark the progress of the human 
mind. Men will not merely be described, but will 
be made intimately known to us. The changes of 
manners will be indicated, not merely by a few 
general phrases or a few extracts from statistical 
documents, but by appropriate images presented 
in every line. 

If a man, such as we are supposing, should write 
the history of England, he would assuredly not omit 
the battles, the sieges, the negotiations, the seditions, 
the ministerial changes. But with these he would in- 
tersperse the details which are the charm of historical 
romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful 
painted window, which was made by an apprentice 
out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected 
by his master. It is so far superior to every other 
in the church, that, according to the tradition, the 
vanquished artist killed himself from mortification. 
Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used 
those fragments of truth which historians have 
scornfully thrown behind them in a manner which 
may well excite their envy. He has constructed out 
of their gleanings works which, even considered as 
histories, are scarcely less valuable than theirs. But 
a truly great historian would reclaim those mate- 



Macaulay 323 

rials which the novelist has appropriated. The his- 
tory of the government, and the history of the people, 
would be exhibited in that mode in which alone they 
can be exhibited justly, in inseparable conjunction 
and intermixture. We should not then have to 
look for the wars and votes of the Puritans in 
Clarendon, and for their phraseology in " Old Mor- 
tality " ; for one half of King James in Hume, and 
for the other half in the " Fortunes of Nigel." 

The early part of our imaginary history would 
be rich with colouring from romance, ballad, and 
chronicle. We should find ourselves in the company 
of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pil- 
grims such as those who rode with Chaucer from 
the Tabard. Society would be shown from the 
highest to the lowest, — from the royal cloth of 
state to the den of the outlaw; from the throne 
of the legate, to the chimney corner where the 
begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, 
crusaders, — the stately monastery, with the good 
cheer in its refectory and the high-mass in its 
chapel, — the manor-house, with its hunting and 
' hawking, — the tournament, with the heralds and 
ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of gold, — would 
give truth and life to the representation. We should 
perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the impor- 
tance of the privileged burgher, and the fierce and 
haughty spirit which swelled under the collar of 
the degraded villain. The revival of letters would 
not merely be described in a few magnificent periods. 
We should discern, in innumerable particulars, the 
fermentation of mind, the eager appetite for knowl- 
edge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the 
fifteenth century. In the Reformation we should 



324 Best English Essays 

see, not merely a schism which changed the ecclesi- 
astical constitution of England and the mutual re- 
lations of the European powers, but a moral war 
which raged in every family, which set the father 
against the son, and the son against the father, 
the mother against the daughter, and the daughter 
against the mother. Henry would be painted with 
the skill of Tacitus. We should have the change 
of his character from his profuse and joyous youth 
to his savage and imperious old age. We should 
perceive the gradual progress of selfish and tyran- 
nical passions in a mind not naturally insensible 
or ungenerous; and to the last we should detect 
some remains of that open and noble temper which 
endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, strug- 
gling with the hardness of despotism and the irrita- 
bility of disease. We should see Elizabeth in all 
her weakness and in all her strength, surrounded by 
the handsome favourites whom she never trusted, 
and the wise old statesman whom she never dis- 
missed, uniting in herself the most contradictory 
qualities of both her parents, — the coquetry, the 
caprice, the petty malice of Anne, — the haughty 
and resolute spirit of Henry. We have no hesi- 
tation in saying that a great artist might produce 
a portrait of this remarkable woman at least as 
striking as that in the novel of " Kenilworth,'' 
without employing a single trait not authenticated 
by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should 
see arts cultivated, wealth accumulated, the con- 
veniences of life improved. We should see the 
keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread in- 
security around them, gradually giving place to the 
halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels of Longleat, 



Macaulay ^^S 

and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should 
see towns extended, deserts cultivated, and hamlets 
of fishermen turned into wealthy havens, the meal 
of the peasant improved, and his hut more com- 
modiously furnished. We should see those opinions 
and feelings which produced the great struggle 
against the house of Stuart slowly growing up in 
the bosom of private families, before they mani- 
fested themselves in parliamentary debates. Then 
would come the civil war. Those skirmishes on 
which Clarendon dwells so minutely would be told, 
as Thucydides would have told them, with perspic- 
uous conciseness. They were merely connecting 
links. But the great characteristics of the age, the 
loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, 
the fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, 
drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the 
royal cause, — the austerity of the Presbyterian 
Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the inde- 
pendent preachers in the camp, the precise garb, 
the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the 
affected accent, the absurd names and phrases 
which marked the Puritans, — the valour, the policy, 
the public spirit which lurked beneath these un- 
graceful disguises, — the dreams of the raving Fifth- 
monarchy-man, the dreams, scarcely less wild, of 
the philosophic republican, — all these would enter 
into the representation, and render it at once more 
exact and more striking. 

The instruction derived from history thus written 
would be of a vivid and practical character. It 
would be received by the imagination as well as 
by the reason. It would be not merely traced on 
the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too. 



326 Best English Essays 

would be learned, which can be learned in no other 
manner. As the history of states is generally writ- 
ten, the greatest and most momentous revolutions 
seem to come upon them like supernatural inflic- 
tions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that 
such revolutions are almost always the consequences 
of moral changes, which have gradually passed on 
the mass of the community, and which ordinarily 
proceed far before their progress is indicated by 
any public measure. An intimate knowledge of the 
domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely 
necessary to the prognosis of political events. A 
narrative, defective in this respect, is as useless as 
a medical treatise which should pass by all the 
symptoms attendant on the early stage of a disease 
and mention only what occurs when the patient is 
beyond the reach of remedies. 

A historian, such as we have been attempting to 
describe, would indeed be an intellectual prodigy. 
In his mind, powers scarcely compatible with each 
other must be tempered into an exquisite harmony. 
We shall sooner see another Shakespeare or another 
Homer. The highest excellence to which any single 
faculty can be brought would be less surprising 
than such a happy and delicate combination of quali- 
ties. Yet the contemplation of imaginary models 
is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the 
mind. It cannot indeed produce perfection ; but it 
produces improvement, and nourishes that generous 
and liberal fastidiousness which is not inconsistent 
with the strongest sensibility to merit, and which, 
while it exalts our conceptions of the art, does not 
render us unjust to the artist. 



IX 
RUSKIN 



RUSKIN: 
THE IMPASSIONED CRITIC 

MATTHEW ARNOLD once spoke of 
poetry as " a criticism of life." He 
might better have called it a personal 
interpretation of life. In the sense that Mr. 
Arnold used the word criticism, the writings of 
all the great essay writers have been essentially 
criticisms of life.-^ Bacon's was an analytic criti- 
cism, Swift's a satirical criticism, Lamb's a loving 
criticism, and so on..,. But all these writers chose 
for the most part subjects which they could only 
illustrate, or which they might use as a vehicle 
for conveying their own personality or their view 
of life to the reader. When the subject itself is 
the centre of the writer's interest, and he seriously 
wishes to analyze or illustrate it, he becomes a 
critic in the modern technical sense of the word.^ 
Ruskin was from beginning to end essentially 
a critic. He first undertook in his " Modern 
Painters " to illustrate and analyze certain phases 
of modern painting."^ To accomplish his object 
fully he must present by description the things of 
which he wishes to speak, or he must present by 
means of descriptions certain objects which he 



330 Best English Essays 

wishes to use for purposes of illustration. It was 
the vividness of these incidental descriptions that 
first attracted attention to Ruskin's style and gave 
him the name " prose poet." To create " prose 
poems," however, was farthest from his own 
thought, and we should fail to understand these 
*' purple patches " {purpureus pannus, in the lan- 
guage of Horace), such, for example, as the de- 
scription of Turner's " Slave Ship " at the end of 
the chapter on " Sea-painting," should we sepa- 
rate them from their practical use of incidental 
illustration. Ruskin wrote these highly colored 
bits almost unconsciously,^ we must believe, and 
simply for the reason that he was passionately 
interested in his subject. Being a man of pas- 
sionate devotion, he wrote with passion. Had he 
been a mere seer of pictures, he would have been 
a poet ; but as he was a thinker, and his mind had 
an analytic turn, he became a true critic, though 
none the less passionate because he wrote criti- 
cism instead of poetry. 

Ruskin began as a young man with art criti- 
cism and the criticism of architecture. His real 
interest was in nature and the effect of art on 
human nature. His study of the whole problem 
of the action of art on humanity and humanity 
on art led him at last to look into the conditions 
which made human beings blind to art. As was 
always the case with him, he entered upon this 

1 We find the same picturesque language in his note-books, 
intended merely for his own personal reference. 



Ruskin 331 

investigation with passionate interest. It led him 
into poHtical economy, of which he knew Httle 
historically or philosophically; but he plunged 
with his usual passionate interest into the gen- 
eral subject of human relations and especially the 
condition of the masses. In this work he met 
many rebuffs and much discouragement. At last 
in the guise of a series of fortnightly letters to 
workingmen he wrote his series " Fors Clavi- 
gera," in which he appears as the satirical though 
sympathetic critic of all phases of human rela- 
tionship. Through these three different kinds of 
writing we see the passionate element changing, 
but never disappearing. First it shows itself as 
highly colored description, then as daring and 
fearless philosophy, at last as the bitterness of 
satire. 

Ruskin had the gift of a silvery eloquence above 
any other writer of the nineteenth century. His 
mastery of the musical element of language is 
equal in prose to that of Tennyson in poetry ; but 
whereas Tennyson's gifts were partly acquired, 
or at any rate assiduously cultivated, Ruskin' s 
gifts in this direction were largely natural, or 
v/ere developed unconsciously by his enthusiasm 
in his subject. United with this musical mastery 
is a fine sense of logical relationship. The two 
qualities together make such a simple story as 
" The King of the Golden River " an almost 
perfect specimen of natural prose style. As a 
model of style, however, it is so simple and so 



2^2 Best English Essays 

nearly perfect that its qualities can hardly be 
perceived by the ordinary mind, which feels the 
pleasing effect, but fails to analyze the manner. 
To produce such an effect is, of course, the height 
of literary art. 

While Ruskin owes the quality of his prose 
largely to his passionate nature, it is that nature 
that led him into so many extravagances and 
excesses. One of these extravagances we may 
see in the conclusion of " The Virtues of Archi- 
tecture." ^ We understand what Ruskin meant; 
but his statement as it stands is obviously dis- 
torted and, from the common point of view, un- 
true. It illustrates the difficulties of writing 
perfect prose till one's own nature has been per- 
fectly subjected to the experience that comes with 
years and the self-mastery of a healthy mind. 

1 " I shall endeavour so to lead the reader forward from the 
foundation upwards, as that he may find out for himself the best 
way of doing everything, and having so discovered it, never forget 
it. I shall give him stones, and bricks, and straw, chisels, and 
trowels, and the ground, and then ask him to build ; only help- 
ing him, as I can, if I find him puzzled. And when he has built 
his house or church, I shall ask him to ornament it, and leave it to 
him to choose the ornaments as I did to find out the construction : 
I shall use no influence with him whatever, except to counteract 
previous prejudices, and leave him as far as may be, free. And 
when he has thus found out how to build, and chosen his forms of 
decoration, I shall do what I can to confirm his confidence in 
what he has done, I shall assure him that no one in the world 
could, so far, have done better, and require him to condemn, as 
futile or fallacious, whatever has no resemblance to his own 
performances." 



Ruskin 333 



SEA-PAINTING 
(Modern Painters, Vol. I.) 

AS the right rendering of the Alps depends on 
power of drawing snow, so the right painting 
of the sea must depend, at least in all coast scenery, 
in no small measure on the power of drawing foam. 
Yet there are two conditions of foam of invariable 
occurrence on breaking waves, of which I have 
never seen the slightest record attempted; first the 
thick creamy curdling overlapping massy form 
which remains for a moment only after the fall of 
the wave, and is seen in perfection in its running 
up the beach ; and secondly, the thin white coating 
into which this subsides, which opens into oval gaps 
and clefts, marbling the waves over their whole 
surface, and connecting the breakers on a flat shore 
by long dragging streams of white. 

It is evident that the difficulty of expressing either 
of these two conditions must be immense. The 
lapping and curdling form is difficult enough to 
catch even when the lines of its undulation alone 
are considered ; but the lips, so to speak, which He 
along these lines, are full, projecting, and marked 
by beautiful light and shade; each has its high 
light, a gradation into shadow of indescribable 
delicacy, a bright reflected light and a dark cast 
shadow ; to draw all this requires labour, and care, 
and firmness of work, which, as I imagine, must 
always, however skilfully bestowed, destroy all im- 
pression of wildness, accidentalism, and evanes- 
cence, and so kill the sea. Again, the openings in 



334 ^^st English Essays 

the thin subsided foam in their irregular modifica- 
tions of circular and oval shapes dragged hither 
and thither, would be hard enough to draw even if 
they could be seen on a flat surface; instead of 
which, every one of the openings is seen in undula- 
tion on a tossing surface, broken up over small 
surges and ripples, and so thrown into perspectives 
of the most hopeless intricacy. Now it is not easy 
to express the lie of a pattern with oval openings on 
the folds of drapery. I do not know that any one 
under the mark of Veronese or Titian could even 
do this as it ought to be done, yet in drapery much 
stiffness and error may be overlooked; not so in 
sea, — the slightest inaccuracy, the slightest want 
of flow and freedom in the line, is attacked by the 
eye in a moment of high treason, and I believe 
success to be impossible. 

Yet there is not a wave or any violently agitated 
sea on which both these forms do not appear, — the 
latter especially, after some time of storm, extends 
over their whole surfaces ; the reader sees, there- 
fore, why I said that sea could only be painted by 
means of more or less dexterous conventionalisms, 
since two of its most enduring phenomena cannot 
be represented at all. 

Again, as respects the form of breakers on an 
even shore, there is difficulty of no less formidable 
kind. There is in them an irreconcilable mixture 
of fury and formalism. Their hollow surface is 
marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill- 
weir, and graduated by reflected and transmitted 
lights of the most wonderful intricacy, its curve 
being at the same time necessarily of mathematical 
purity and precision; yet at the top of this curve, 



Rusldn ;}2S 

when it nods over, there is a sudden laxity and 
giving way, the water swings and jumps along the 
ridge like a shaken chain, and the motion runs from 
part to part as it does through a serpent's body. 
Then the wind is at work on the extreme edge, and 
instead of letting it fling itself off naturally, it sup- 
ports it, and drives it back, or scrapes it off, and car- 
ries it bodily away ; so that the spray at the top is 
in a continual transition between forms projected by 
their own weight, and forms blown and carried off 
with their weight overcome; then at last, when it 
has come down, who shall say what shape that may 
be called, which shape has none of the great crash 
where it touches the beach. 

I think it is that last crash which is the great task- 
master. Nobody can do anything with it. I have 
seen Copley Fielding come very close to the jerk 
and nod of the lifted threatening edge, curl it very 
successfully, and without any look of its having 
been in papers, down nearly to the beach, but the 
final fall has no thunder in it. Turner has tried 
hard for it once or twice, but it will not do. The 
moment is given in the Sidon of the Bible Illustra- 
tions, and more elaborately in a painting of Bam- 
borough ; in both these cases there is little foam at 
the bottom, and the fallen breaker looks like a wall, 
yet grand always; and in the latter picture very 
beautifully assisted in expression by the tossing of 
a piece of cable, which some figures are dragging 
ashore, and which the breaker flings into the air 
as it falls. Perhaps the most successful rendering 
of the forms was in the Hero and Leander, but 
there the drawing was rendered easier by the 
powerful effect of light which disguised the foam. 



^^6 Best English Essays 

It is not, however, from the shore that Turner 
usually studies his sea. Seen from the land, the curl 
of the breakers, even in nature, is somewhat uni- 
form and monotonous; the size of the waves out 
at sea is uncomprehended, and those nearer the 
eye seem to succeed and resemble each other, to 
move slowly to the beach, and to break in the same 
lines and forms. 

Afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we 
receive a totally different impression. Every wave 
around us appears vast — every one different from 
all the rest — and the breakers present, now that 
we see them with their backs towards us, the grand, 
extended, and varied lines of long curvature, which 
are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power. 
Recklessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the 
mad, perpetual, changeful, undirected motion, not 
of wave after wave, as it appears from the shore, 
but of the very same water rising and falling. Of 
waves that successively approach and break, each 
appears to the mind a separate individual, whose 
part being performed, it perishes, and is succeeded 
by another ; and there is nothing in this to impress 
us with the idea of restlessness, any more than in 
any successive and continuous functions of life and 
death. But it is when we perceive that it is no 
succession of wave, but the same water constantly 
rising, and crashing, and recoiling, and rolling in 
again in new forms and with fresh fury, that we 
perceive the perturbed spirit, and feel the intensity 
of its unwearied rage. The sensation of power is 
also trebled ; for not only is the vastness of appar- 
ent size much increased, but the whole action is 
different; it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily 



Ruskin 337 

forward until it tumbles heavily, prostrated upon 
the beach, but a sweeping exertion of tremendous 
and living strength, which does not now appear to 
fall, but to hurst upon the shore; which never 
perishes, but recoils and recovers. 

Aiming at these grand characters of the Sea, 
Turner almost always places the spectator, not on 
the shore, but twenty or thirty yards from it, beyond 
the first range of the breakers, as in the Land's End, 
Fowey, Dunbar, and Laugharne. The latter has 
been well engraved, and may be taken as a standard 
of the expression of fitfulness and power. The 
grand division of the whole space of the sea by a 
few dark continuous furrows of tremendous swell, 
(the breaking of one of which alone has strewed 
the rocks in front with ruin), furnishes us with 
an estimate of space and strength, which at once 
reduces the men upon the shore to insects ; and yet 
through this terrific simplicity there is indicated a 
fitfulness and fury in the tossing of the individual 
lines, which give to the whole sea a wild, unwearied, 
reckless incoherency, like that of an enraged multi- 
tude, whose masses act together in frenzy, while 
not one individual feels as another. Especial atten- 
tion is to be directed to the flatness of all the lines, 
for the same principle holds in sea which we have 
seen in mountains. All the size and sublimity of 
nature are given not by the height, but by the 
breadth of her masses : and Turner, by following 
her in her sweeping lines, while he does not lose 
the elevation of its surges, adds in a tenfold degree 
to their power: farther, observe the peculiar ex- 
pression of weight which there is in Turner's waves, 
precisely of the same kind which we saw in his 

22 



;^;^S Best English Essays 

waterfall. We have not a cutting, springing, elastic 
line — no jumping or leaping in the waves : that 
is the characteristic of Chelsea Reach or Hampstead 
Ponds in a storm. But the surges roll and plunge 
with such prostration and hurling of their mass 
against the shore, that we feel the rocks are shaking 
under them ; and, to add yet more to this impres- 
sion, observe how little, comparatively, they are 
broken by the wind; above the floating wood, and 
along the shore, we have indication of a line of torn 
spray ; but it is a mere fringe along the ridge of 
the surge — no interference with its gigantic body. 
The wind has no power over its tremendous unity 
of force and weight. Finally, observe how, on the 
rocks on the left, the violence and swiftness of the 
rising wave are indicated by precisely the same lines 
which we saw were indicative of fury in the torrent. 
The water on these rocks is the body of the wave 
which has just broken, rushing up over them ; and 
in doing so, like the torrent, it does not break, nor 
foam, nor part upon the rock, but accommodates 
itself to every one of its swells and hollows, with 
undulating lines, whose grace and variety might 
alone serve us for a day's study ; and it is only 
where two streams of this rushing water meet in 
the hollow of the rock, that their force is shown by 
the vertical bound of the spray. 

In the distance of this grand picture, there are 
two waves which entirely depart from the principle 
observed by all the rest, and spring high into the 
air. They have a message for us which it is im- 
portant that we should understand. Their leap is 
not a preparation for breaking, neither is it caused 
by their meeting with a rock» It is caused by their 



Ruskin 339 

encounter with the recoil of the preceding wave. 
When a large surge, in the act of breaking, just 
as it curls over, is hurled against the face either 
of a wall or of a vertical rock, the sound of the blow 
is not a crash nor a roar ; it is a report as loud as, 
and in every respect similar to, that of a great gun, 
and the wave is dashed back from the rock with 
force scarcely diminished, but reversed in direction, 
— it now recedes from the shore, and at the instant 
that it encounters the following breaker, the result 
is the vertical bound of both which is here rendered 
by Turner. Such a recoiling wave will proceed 
out to sea through ten or twelve ranges of following 
breakers, before it is overpowered. The effect of 
the encounter is more completely and palpably given 
in the Quilleboeuf, in the Rivers of France. It is 
peculiarly instructive here, as informing us of the 
nature of the coast, and the force of the waves, 
far more clearly than any spray about the rocks 
themselves could have done. But the effect of the 
blow at the shore itself is given in the Land's End, 
and vignette to Lycidas. Under favourable cir- 
cumstances, with an advancing tide under a heavy 
gale, where the breakers feel the shore underneath 
them a moment before they touch the rock, so as 
to nod over when they strike, the effect is nearly 
incredible except to an eye-witness. I have seen 
the whole body of the wave rise in one white, ver- 
tical, broad fountain, eighty feet above the sea, half 
of it beaten so fine as to be borne away by the wind, 
the rest turning in the air when exhausted, and 
falling back with a weight and crash like that of an 
enormous waterfall. This is given most completely 
in the Lycidas, and the blow of a less violent wave 



340 Best English Essays 

among broken rocks, not meeting it with an abso- 
lute wall, along the shore of the Land's End. This 
last picture is a study of sea whose whole organi- 
sation has been broken up by constant recoils from 
a rocky coast. The Laugharne gives the surge and 
weight of the ocean in a gale, on a comparatively 
level shore ; but the Land's End, the entire disorder 
of the surges when every one of them, divided and 
entangled among promontories as it rolls in, and 
beaten back part by part from walls of rock on this 
side and that side, recoils like the defeated division 
of a great army, throwing all behind it into disor- 
der, breaking up the succeeding waves into vertical 
ridges, which in their turn, yet more totally shat- 
tered upon the shore, retire in more hopeless confu- 
sion, until the whole surface of the sea becomes one 
dizzy whirl of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected 
rage, bounding, and crashing, and coiling in an 
anarchy of enormous power, subdivided into myriads 
of waves, of which every one is not, be it remem- 
bered, a separate surge, but part and portion of a 
vast one, actuated by internal power, and giving in 
every direction the mighty undulation of impetuous 
line which gHdes over the rocks and writhes in the 
wind, overwhelming the one, and piercing the other 
with the form, fury, and swiftness of a sheet of lam- 
bent fire. And throughout the rendering of all this, 
there is not one false curve given, not one which 
is not the perfect expression of visible motion ; and 
the forms of the infinite sea are drawn throughout 
with that utmost mastery of art which, through the 
deepest study of every line makes every line appear 
the wildest child of chance, while yet each is in 
itself a subject and a picture different from all else 



Ruskin 341 

around. Of the colour of this magnificent sea I 
have before spoken; it is a solemn green grey, 
(with its foam seen dimly through the darkness of 
twilight,) modulated with the fulness, changeful- 
ness, and sadness of a deep, wild melody. 

The greater number of Turner's paintings of open 
sea belong to a somewhat earlier period than these 
drawings ; nor, generally speaking, are they of 
equal value. It appears to me that the artist had at 
that time either less knowledge of, or less delight 
in, the characteristics of deep water than of coast 
sea, and that, in consequence, he suffered himself 
to be influenced by some of the qualities of the 
Dutch sea-painters. In particular, he borrowed 
from them the habit of casting a dark shadow on 
the near waves, so as to bring out a stream of light 
behind ; and though he did this in a more legitimate 
way than they, that is to say, expressing the light 
by touches on the foam, and indicating the shadow 
as cast on foamy surface, still the habit has induced 
much feebleness and conventionality in the pictures 
of the period. His drawing of the waves was also 
somewhat petty and divided, small forms covered 
with white flat spray, a condition which I doubt not 
the artist has seen on some of the shallow Dutch 
seas, but which I have never met with myself, and 
of the rendering of which therefore I cannot speak. 
Yet even in these, which I think among the poorest 
works of the painter, the expressions of breeze, 
motion, and light, are very marvellous ; and it is 
instructive to compare them either with the life- 
less works of the Dutch themselves, or with any 
modern imitations of them, as for instance with 
the seas of Callcott, where all the light is white 



342 Best English Essays 

and all the shadows grey, where no distinction is 
made between water and form, or between real and 
reflective shadow, and which are generally with- 
out evidence of the artists having ever seen the 
sea. 

Some pictures, however, belonging to this period 
of Turner are free from the Dutch infection, and 
show the real power of the artist. A very important 
one is in the possession of Lord Francis Egerton, 
somewhat heavy in its forms, but remarkable for 
the grandeur of distance obtained at the horizon; 
a much smaller, but more powerful example is the 
Port Ruysdael in the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq., 
with which I know of no work at all comparable 
for the expression of the white, wild, cold, comfort- 
less waves of northern sea, even though the sea is 
almost subordinate to the awful rolling clouds. 
Both these pictures are very grey. The Pas de 
Calais has more colour, and shows more art than 
either, yet is less impressive. Recently, two marines 
of the same subdued colour have appeared (1843) 
among his more radiant works. One, Ostend, some- 
what forced and affected, but the other, also called 
Port Ruysdael, is among the most perfect sea pic- 
tures he has produced, and especially remarkable 
as being painted without one marked opposition 
either of colour or of shade, all quiet and simple 
even to an extreme, so that the picture was exceed- 
ingly unattractive at first sight. The shadow of the 
pier-head on the near waves is marked solely by 
touches indicative of reflected light, and so myste- 
riously that when the picture is seen near, it is quite 
untraceable, and comes into existence as the specta- 
tor retires. It is thus of peculiar truth and value; 



Ruskin 34J 

and instructive as a contrast to the dark shadows of 
his earlier time. 

Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the 
effect on the sea of a powerful gale continued with- 
out intermission for three or four days and nights, 
and to those who have not, I believe it must be unim- 
aginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, 
but from the complete annihilation of the limit 
between sea and air. The water from its prolonged 
agitation is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, 
but into masses of accumulated yeast,^ which hang 

1 The " yesty waves " of Shakespeare have made the likeness 
familiar, and probably most readers take the expression as merely 
equivalent to "foamy"; but Shakespeare knew better. Sea- 
foam does not, under ordinary circumstances, last a moment after 
it is formed, but disappears, as above described, in a mere white 
film. But the foam of a prolonged tempest is altogether differ- 
ent; it is "whipped " foam, — thick, permanent, and, in a foul or 
discoloured sea, very ugly, especially in the way it hangs about the 
tops of the waves, and gathers into clotted concretions before 
the driving wind. The sea looks truly working or fermenting. 
The following passage from Fenimore Cooper is an interesting 
confirmation of the rest of the above description, which may be 
depended upon as entirely free from exaggeration: — "For the 
first time I now witnessed a tempest at sea. Gales, and pretty 
hard ones, I had often seen, but the force of the wind on this 
occasion as much exceeded that in ordinary gales of wind, as the 
force of these had exceeded that of a whole-sail breeze. The sea 
seemed crushed ; the pressure of the swooping atmosphere, as 
the currents of the air went howling over the surface of the 
ocean, fairly preventing' them from rising; or where a mound of 
water did appear, it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as 
the axe dubs inequalities from the log. "When the day returned, 
a species of lurid, sombre light was diffused over the watery 
waste, though nothing was visible but the ocean and the ship. 
Even the sea-birds seemed to have taken refuge in the caverns of 
the adjacent coast, none reappearing with the dawn. The air 
was full of spray, and it was with difficulty that the eye could 



344 ^^st English Essays 

in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, and where 
one curls over to break, form a festoon like a 
drapery, from its edge; these are taken up by the 
wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writh- 
ing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air 
white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a 
foot or two long each; the surges themselves are 
full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making 
them white all through, as the water is under a great 
cataract ; and their masses, being thus half water 
and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind when- 
ever they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, 
which chokes and strangles like actual water. Add 
to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its 
moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught 
by it as described above, and covers its surface not 
merely with the smoke of finely divided water, but 
with boiling mist ; imagine also the low rain-clouds 
brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have 
often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and 
fragments from wave to wave ; and finally, conceive 
the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, 
velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in 
precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of 
ascent, through all this chaos ; and you will under- 
stand that there is indeed no distinction left between 
the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any 
landmark or natural evidence of position is left; 
that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, 
and that you can see no farther in any direction than 
you could see through a cataract. Suppose the 

penetrate as far into the humid atmosphere as half a mile." — 
Miles Wallingford, Half a mile is an over-estimate in coast. 
(Ruskin's note.) 



Ruskin 345 

effect of the first sunbeam sent from above to show 
this annihilation to itself, and you have the sea pic- 
ture of the Academy, 1842 — the snow-storm, one 
of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, 
and light that has ever been put on canvas, even by 
Turner. Of course it was not understood; his 
finest works never are ; but there was some apology 
for the public's not comprehending this, for few 
people have had the opportunity of seeing the sea 
at such a time, and when they have, cannot face it. 
To hold by a mast or a rock, and watch it is a pro- 
longed endurance of drowning which few people 
have courage to go through. To those who have, 
it is one of the noblest lessons of nature. 

But, I think, the noblest sea that Turner has ever 
painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted 
by man, is that of the Slave Ship, the chief Academy 
picture of the exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset on 
the Atlantic after prolonged storm ; but the storm is 
partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain- 
clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves 
in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of 
sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges 
of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, 
broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting 
of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture 
of the storm. Between these two ridges, the fire of 
the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dye- 
ing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense 
and lurid splendour which burns like gold and 
bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley, 
the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is 
restlessly divided, Hft themselves in dark, indefinite, 
fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly 



34^ Best English Essays 

shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They 
do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in 
wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under 
strength of the swell compels or permits them; 
leaving between them treacherous spaces of level 
and whirling water, now lighted with green and 
lamp-Hke fire, now flashing back the gold of the 
declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with 
the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, 
which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scar- 
let, and give to the reckless waves the added motion 
of their own fiery flying. Purple and blue, the lurid 
shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the 
mist of the night, which gathers cold and low, 
advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty ^ 
ship as it labours amidst the lightning of the sea, 
its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, 
girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which 
signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming 
flood with the sunlight, — and cast far along the 
desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines 
the multitudinous sea. 

I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's im- 
mortality upon any single work, I should choose 
this. Its daring conception — ideal in the highest 
sense of the word — is based on the purest truth, 
and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge 
of a life; its colour is absolutely perfect, not one 
false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so mod- 
ulated that every square inch of canvas is a perfect 
composition ; its drawing as accurate as fearless ; 
the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion ; its 

1 She is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. The near 
sea is encumbered with corpses. (Ruskin's note.) 



Ruskin 347 

tones as true as they are wonderful ; ^ and the whole 
picture dedicated to the most sublime of subjects 
and impressions — (completing thus the perfect 
system of all truth, which we have shown to be 
formed by Turner's works) — the power, majesty, 
and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable Sea. 



THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE 
(Stones of Venice, Vol. 11.) 

WE address ourselves first to the task of de- 
termining some law of right which we may 
apply to the architecture of all the world and of all 
time ; and by help of which, and judgment accord- 
ing to which, we may easily pronounce whether a 
building is good or noble, as, by applying a plumb- 
line, whether it be perpendicular. 

1 There is a piece of tone of the same kind, equal in one part, 
but not so united with the rest of the picture, in the storm scene 
illustrative of the "Antiquary," — a sunset light on polished sea. 
I ought to have particularly mentioned the sea in the Lowestoffe, 
as a piece of the cutting motion of shallow water, under storm, 
altogether in grey, which should be especially contrasted, as a 
piece of colour, with the greys of Vandevelde. And the sea in the 
Great Yarmouth should have been noticed for its expression of 
water in violent agitation, seen in enormous extent from a great 
elevation. There is almost every form of sea in it, — rolling 
waves dashing on the pier — successive breakers rolling to the 
shore — a vast horizon of multitudinous waves — and winding 
canals of calm water along the sands, bringing fragments of 
bright sky down into their yellow waste. There is hardly one of 
the views of the Southern Coast which does not give some new 
condition or circumstance of sea. (Raskin's note.) 



348 Best English Essays 

The first question will of course be, What are the 
possible Virtues of architecture? 

In the main, we require from buildings, as from 
men, two kinds of goodness : first, the doing their 
practical duty well : then that they be graceful 
and pleasing in doing it ; which last is itself another 
form of duty. 

Then the practical duty divides itself into two 
branches, — acting and talking : — acting, as to 
defend us from weather or violence ; talking, as the 
duty of monuments or tombs, to record facts and 
express feelings ; or of churches, temples, public 
edifices, treated as books of history, to tell such 
history clearly and forcibly. 

We have thus, altogether, three great branches 
of architectural virtue, and we require of any 
building, — 

1. That it act well, and do the things it was 
intended to do in the best way. 

2. That it speak well, and say the things it was 
intended to say in the best words. 

3. That it look well, and please us by its presence, 
whatever it has to do or say. 

Now, as regards the second of these virtues, it is 
evident that we can establish no general laws. First, 
because it is not a virtue required in all buildings ; 
there are some which are only for covert or defence, 
and from which we ask no conversation. Secondly, 
because there are countless methods of expression, 
some conventional, some natural : each conventional 
mode has its own alphabet, which evidently can be 
no subject of general laws. Every natural mode is 
instinctively employed and instinctively understood, 
wherever there is true feeling; and this instinct is 



Ruskin 349 

above law. The choice of conventional methods 
depends on circumstances out of calculation, and 
that of natural methods on sensations out of con- 
trol ; so that we can only say that the choice is right, 
when we feel that the means are effective; and we 
cannot always say that it is wrong when they are 
not so. 

A building which recorded the Bible history by 
means of a series of sculptural pictures, would be 
perfectly useless to a person unacquainted with the 
Bible beforehand; on the other hand, the text of 
the Old and New Testaments might be written on 
its walls, and yet the building be a very inconven- 
ient kind of book, not so useful as if it had been 
adorned with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So, 
again, the power of exciting emotion must vary or 
vanish, as the spectator becomes thoughtless or cold ; 
and the building may be often blamed for what is 
the fault of its critic, or endowed with a charm 
which is of its spectator's creation. It is not, there- 
fore, possible to make expressional character any 
fair criterion of excellence in buildings, until we can 
fully place ourselves in the position of those to 
whom their expression was originally addressed, 
and until we are certain that we understand every 
symbol, and are capable of being touched by every 
association which its builders employed as letters 
of their language. I shall continually endeavour 
to put the reader into such sympathetic temper, 
when I ask for his judgment of a building; and 
in every work I may bring before him I shall point 
out, as far as I am able, whatever is peculiar in its 
expression ; nay, I must even depend on such pe- 
cuHarities for much of my best evidence respecting 



350 Best English Essays 

the character of the builders. But I cannot legalise 
the judgment for which I plead, nor insist upon it 
if it be refused. I can neither force the reader to 
feel this architectural rhetoric, nor compel him to 
confess that the rhetoric is powerful, if it have pro- 
duced no impression on his own mind. 

I leave, therefore, the expression of buildings for 
incidental notice only. But their other two virtues 
are proper subjects of law, — their performance of 
their common and necessary work, and their con- 
formity with universal and divine canons of love- 
liness : respecting these there can be no doubt, no 
ambiguity. I would have the reader discern them, 
so quickly that, as he passes along a street, he 
may, by a glance of the eye distinguish the noble 
from the ignoble work. He can do this, if he permit 
free play to his natural instincts ; and all that I have 
to do for him is to remove from those instincts the 
artificial restraints which prevent their action, and 
to encourage them to an unaffected and unbiassed 
choice between right and wrong. 

We have, then, two qualities of buildings for sub- 
jects of separate inquiry: their action, and aspect, 
and the sources of virtue in both ; that is to say. 
Strength and Beauty, both of these being less ad- 
mired in themselves, than as testifying the intelli- 
gence or imagination of the builder. 

For we have a worthier way of looking at human 
than at divine architecture : much of the value both 
of construction and decoration, in the edifices of 
men, depends upon our being led by the thing pro- 
duced or adorned, to some contemplation of the 
powers of mind concerned in its creation or adorn- 
ment. We are not so led by divine work, but are 



Ruskin 351 

content to rest in the contemplation of the thing 
created. I wish the reader to note this especially: 
we take pleasure, or should take pleasure, in archi- 
tectural construction altogether as the manifestation 
of an admirable human intelligence ; it is not the 
strength, not the size, not the finish of the work 
which we are to venerate : rocks are always stronger, 
mountains always larger, all natural objects more 
finished ; but it is the intelligence and resolution of 
man in overcoming physical difficulty which are to 
be the source of our pleasure and subject of our 
praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is 
less the actual loveliness of the thing produced, 
than the choice and invention concerned in the pro- 
duction, which are to delight us ; the love and the 
thoughts of the workman more than his work : his 
work must always be imperfect, but his thoughts 
and affections may be true and deep. 

This origin of our pleasure in architecture I must 
insist upon at somewhat greater length, for I would 
fain do away with some of the ungrateful coldness 
which we show towards the good builders of old 
time. In no art is there closer connection between 
our delight in the work, and our admiration of the 
workman's mind, than in architecture, and yet we 
rarely ask for a builder's name. The patron at 
whose cost, the monk through whose dreaming, the 
foundation was laid, we remember occasionally; 
never the man who verily did the work. Did the 
reader ever hear of William of Sens as having had 
anything to do with Canterbury Cathedral? or of 
Pietro Basegio as in anywise connected with the 
Ducal Palace of Venice ? There is much ingratitude 
and injustice in this; and therefore I desire my 



2^2 Best English Essays 

reader to observe carefully how much of his pleasure 
in building is derived, or should be derived, from 
admiration of the intellect of men whose names he 
knows not. 

The two virtues of architecture which we can 
justly weigh, are, we said, its strength or good 
construction, and its beauty or good decoration. 
Consider first, therefore, what you mean when you 
say a building is well constructed or well built; 
3^ou do not merely mean that it answers its purpose, 
— this is much, and many modern buildings fail of 
this much ; but if it be verily well built, it must 
answer this purpose in the simplest way, and with 
no over-expenditure of means. We require of a 
light-house, for instance, that it shall stand firm and 
carry a Hght; if it do not this, assuredly it has 
been ill built ; but it may do it to the end of time, 
and yet not be well built. It may have hundreds 
of tons of stone in it more than were needed, and 
have cost thousands of pounds more than it ought. 
To pronounce it well or ill built, we must know the 
utmost forces it can have to resist, and the best 
arrangements of stone for encountering them, and 
the quickest ways of effecting such arrangements : 
then only, so far as such arrangements have been 
chosen, and such methods used, is it well built. 
Then the knowledge of all difficulties to be met, 
and of all means of meeting them, and the quick 
and true fancy or invention of the modes of apply- 
ing the means to the end, are what we have to 
admire in the builder, even as he is seen through 
this first or inferior part of his work. Mental 
power, observe : not muscular nor mechanical, nor 
technical, nor empirical, — pure, precious, majestic, 



Ruskin 353 

massy intellect; not to be had at vulgar price, 
nor received without thanks, and without asking 
from whom. 

Suppose, for instance, we are present at the build- 
ing of a bridge: the bricklayers or masons have 
had their centring erected for them, and that cen- 
tring was put together by a carpenter, who had the 
line of its curve traced for him by the architect: 
the masons are dexterously handling and fitting 
their bricks, or, by the help of machinery, care- 
fully adjusting stones which are numbered for their 
places. There is probably in their quickness of eye 
and readiness of hand something admirable; but 
this is not what I ask the reader to admire: not 
the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor anything 
that he can presently see and understand, but the 
choice of the curve, and the shaping of the num- 
bered stones, and the appointment of that number; 
there were many things to be known and thought 
upon before these were decided. The man who 
chose the curve and numbered the stones, had to 
know the times and tides of the river, and the 
strength of its floods, and the height and flow of 
them, and the soil of the banks, and the endurance 
of it, and the weight of the stones he had to build 
with, and the kind of traffic that day by day would be 
carried on over his bridge, — all this specially, and 
all the great general laws of force and weight, 
and their working; and in the choice of the curve 
and numbering of stones are expressed not only 
his knowledge of these, but such ingenuity and 
firmness as he had, in applying special means to 
overcome the special difficulties about his bridge. 
There is no saying how much wit, how much depth 

23 



354 S^st English Essays 

of thought, how much fancy, presence of mind, 
courage, and fixed resolution there may have gone 
to the placing of a single stone of it. This is 
what we have to admire, — this grand power and 
heart of man in the thing; not his technical or 
empirical way of holding the trowel and laying 
mortar. 

Now there is in everything properly called art 
this concernment of the intellect, even in the prov- 
ince of the art which seems merely practical. For 
observe : in this bridge-building I suppose no ref er^ 
ence to architectural principles; all that I suppose 
we want is to get safely over the river; the man 
who has taken us over is still a mere bridge-builder, 
— a builder, not an architect: he may be a rough, 
artless, feelingless man, incapable of doing any one 
truly fine thing all his days. I shall call upon you 
to despise him presently in a sort, but not as if he 
were a mere smoother of mortar; perhaps a great 
man, infinite in memory, indefatigable in labour, 
exhaustless in expedient, unsurpassable in quickness 
of thought. Take good heed you understand him 
before you despise him. 

But why is he to be in anywise despised? By 
no means despise him, unless he happen to be with- 
out a soul, or at least to show no signs of it ; which 
possibly he may not in merely carrying you across 
the river. He may be merely what Mr. Carlyle 
rightly calls a human beaver after all; and there 
may be nothing in all that ingenuity of his greater 
than a complication of animal faculties, an intricate 
bestiality, — nest or hive building in its highest de- 
velopment. You need something more than this, 
or the man is despicable; you need that virtue of 



Ruskin 355 

building" through which he may show his affections 
and delights ; you need its beauty or decoration. 

Not that, in reality, one division of the man is 
more human than another. Theologists fall into 
this error very fatally and continually; and a man 
from whom I have learned much. Lord Lindsay, 
has hurt his noble book by it, speaking as if the 
Spirit of the man only were immortal, and were 
opposed to his intellect, and the latter to the senses ; 
whereas all the divisions of humanity are noble or 
brutal, immortal or mortal, according to the degree 
of their sanctification : and there is no part of the 
man which is not immortal and divine when it is 
once given to God, and no part of him which is not 
mortal by the second death, and brutal before the 
first, when it is withdrawn from God. For to what 
shall we trust for our distinction from the beasts 
that perish? To our higher intellect? — yet are 
we not bidden to be wise as the serpent, and to 
consider the ways of the ant ? — or to our affections ? 
nay; these are more shared by the lower animals 
than our intelligence. Hamlet leaps into the grave 
of his beloved, and leaves it, — a dog had stayed. 
Humanity and immortality consist neither in reason, 
nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation 
of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings 
of the brain of it, — but in the dedication of them 
all to Him who will raise them up at the last day. 

It is not, therefore, that the signs of his affections, 
which man leaves upon his work, are indeed more 
ennobling than the signs of his intelligence; but 
it is the balance of both whose expression we need, 
and the signs of the government of them all by 
Conscience; and Discretion, the daughter of Con- 



356 Best English Essays 

science. So, then, the intelligent part of man being 
eminently, if not chiefly, displayed in the structure 
of his work, his affectionate part is to be shown 
in its decoration ; and, that decoration may be in- 
deed lovely, two things are needed: first, that the 
affections be vivid, and honestly shown; secondly, 
that they be fixed on the right things. 

You think, perhaps, I have put the requirements 
in wrong order. Logically I have; practically I 
have not: for it is necessary first to teach men 
to speak out, and say what they like, truly; and, 
in the second place, to teach them which of their 
likings are ill set, and which justly. If a man 
is cold in his likings and dislikings, or if he will 
not tell you what he likes, you can make nothing 
of him. Only get him to feel quickly and to speak 
plainly, and you may set him right. And the fact 
is, that the great evil of all recent architectural 
effort has not been that men liked wrong things: 
but that they either cared nothing about any, or 
pretended to like what they did not. Do you sup- 
pose that any modern architect likes what he builds, 
or enjoys it? Not in the least. He builds it be- 
cause he has been told that such and such things 
are fine, and that he should like them. He pretends 
to like them, and gives them a false relish of vanity. 
Do you seriously imagine, reader, that any living 
soul in London likes triglyphs ? ^ — or gets any 
hearty enjoyment out of pediments P^ You are 

1 Triglyph. Literally, " Three Cut." The awkward upright 
ornament with two notches in it, and a cut at each side, to be 
seen everywhere at the tops of Doric colonnades, ancient and 
modern. (Ruskin's note.) 

2 Pediment. The triangular space above Greek porticos. 
(Ruskin's note.) 



Ruskin 357 

much mistaken. Greeks did : English people never 
did, — never will. Do you fancy that the archi- 
tect of old Burlington Mews, in Regent Street, had 
any particular satisfaction in putting the blank tri- 
angle over the archway, instead of a useful garret 
window? By no manner of means. He had been 
told it was right to do so, and thought he should 
be admired for doing it. Very few faults of archi- 
tecture are mistakes of honest choice: they are 
almost always hypocrisies. 

So, then, the first thing we have to ask of the 
decoration is that it should indicate strong liking, 
and that honestly. It matters not so much what the 
thing is, as that the builder should really love it 
and enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of 
Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorns ; so he has 
covered his porch with hawthorn, — it is a perfect 
Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you 
would try to gather it forthwith, but for fear of 
being pricked. The old Lombard architects liked 
hunting; so they covered their work with horses 
and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two yards 
long. The base Renaissance architects of Venice 
liked masquing and fiddling; so they covered their 
work with comic masks and musical instruments. 
Even that was better than our English way of 
liking nothing, and professing to like triglyphs. 

But the second requirement in decoration, is a 
sign of our liking the right thing. And the right 
thing to be liked is God's work, which he made 
for our delight and contentment in this world. And 
all noble ornamentation is the expression of man's 
delight in God's work. 

So, then, these are the two virtues of building: 



358 Best English Essays 

first, the signs of man's own good work; secondly, 
the expression of man's delight in better work than 
his own. And these are the two virtues of which 
I desire my reader to be able quickly to judge, at 
least in some measure; to have a definite opinion 
up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point he 
cannot form one. When the science of the building 
is great, great science is of course required to com- 
prehend it : and, therefore, of difficult bridges, and 
light-houses, and harbour walls, and river dykes, 
and railway tunnels, no judgment may be rapidly 
' formed. But of common buildings, built in common 
circumstances, it is very possible for every man, 
or woman, or child, to form judgment both rational 
and rapid. Their necessary, or even possible, fea- 
tures are but few ; the laws of their construction are 
as simple as they are interesting. The labour of 
a few hours is enough to render the reader master 
of their main points ; and from that moment he 
will find in himself a power of judgment which can 
neither be escaped nor deceived, and discover sub- 
jects of interest where everything before had ap- 
peared barren. For though the laws are few and 
simple, the modes of obedience to them are not so. 
Every building presents its own requirements and 
difficulties; and every good building has peculiar 
appliances or contrivances to meet them. Under- 
stand the laws of structure, and you will feel the 
special difficulty in every new building which you 
approach; and you will know also, or feel instinc- 
tively, whether it has been wisely met or other- 
wise. And an enormous number of buildings, and 
of styles of buildings, you will be able to cast 
aside at once, as at variance with these constant 



Ruskin 359 

laws of structure, and therefore unnatural an4 
monstrous. 

Then, as regards decoration, I want you only to 
consult your own natural choice and liking. There 
is a right and wrong in it; but you will assuredly 
like the right if you suffer your natural instinct 
to lead you. Half the evil in this world comes from 
people not knowing what they do like, not deliber- 
ately setting themselves to find out what they really 
enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for 
instance : they don't know that, — they rather think 
they like keeping it ; and they do keep it under this 
false impression, often to their great discomfort. 
Everybody likes to do good ; but not one in a 
hundred finds this out. Multitudes think they like 
to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing 
evil since God made the world. 

So in this lesser matter of ornament. It needs 
some little care to try experiments upon yourself: 
it needs deliberate question and upright answer. 
But there is no difficulty to be overcome, no abstruse 
reasoning to be gone into ; only a little watchfulness 
needed, and thoughtfulness, and so much honesty 
as will enable you to confess to yourself and to all 
men, that you enjoy things, though great authori- 
ties say you should not. 

This looks somewhat like pride; but it is true 
humility, a trust that you have been so created as to 
enjoy what is fitting for you, and a willingness to 
be pleased, as it was intended you should be. It 
is the child's spirit, which we are then most happy 
when we most recover; only wiser than children 
in that we are ready to think it subject of thankful- 
ness that we can still be pleased with a fair colour or 



360 Best English Essays 

a dancing light. And, above all, do not try to make 
all these pleasures reasonable, nor to connect the 
delight which you take in ornament with that which 
you take in construction or usefulness. They have 
no connection; and every effort that you make to 
reason from one to the other will blunt your sense 
of beauty, or confuse it with sensations altogether 
inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and 
the world was filled with things which you will 
enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased by 
them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot 
turn to other account than mere delight. Remem- 
ber that the most beautiful things in the world are 
the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; 
at least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand 
writes better than a peacock's would, and the peas- 
ants of Vevay, whose fields in spring-time are as 
white with liHes as the Dent du Midi is with its 
snow, told me the hay was none the better for them.* 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
(Introduction or Preface.) 

TWENTY years ago, there was no lovelier piece 
of lowland scenery in South England, nor 
any more pathetic in the world, by its expression of 
sweet human character and life, than that immedi- 
ately bordering on the sources of the Wandle, and 
including the lower moors of Addington, and the 
villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all their 
pools and streams. No clearer or diviner waters ever 

1 For concluding paragraph of original, see note foot of 
page 332. 



Ruskin 361 

sung with constant lips of the hand which " giveth 
rain from heaven " ; no pastures ever lightened in 
spring-time with more passionate blossoming; no 
sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer- 
by with their pride of peaceful gladness — fain- 
hidden — yet full-confessed. The place remains, or, 
until a few months ago, remained, nearly unchanged 
in its larger features; but, with deliberate mind I 
say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly in its 
inner tragic meaning — not in Pisan Maremma — 
not by Campagna tomb — not by the sand-isles of 
the Torcellan shore — as the slow stealing of aspects 
of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the deli- 
cate sweetness of that English scene: nor is any 
blasphemy or impiety — any frantic saying or god- 
less thought more appalling to me, using the best 
power of judgment I have to discern its sense and 
scope, than the insolent defilings of those springs by 
the human herds that drink of them. Just where 
the welling of stainless water, trembling and pure, 
like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, 
cutting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, 
through warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which 
it traverses with its deep threads of clearness, like 
the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here and there 
with white grenouillette ; just in the very rush and 
murmur of the first spreading currents, the human 
wretches of the place cast their street and house 
foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken 
shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; 
they having neither energy to cart it away, nor 
decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus 
shed into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it 
will float and melt, far away, in all places where 



^62 Best English Essays 

God meant those waters to bring joy and health. 
And, in a little pool, behind some houses further 
in the village, where another spring rises, the shat- 
tered stones of the well, and of the little fretted 
channel which was long ago built and traced for 
it by gentler hands, lie scattered, each from each, 
under a ragged bank of mortar, and scoria; and 
bricklayers' refuse, on one side, which the clean 
water nevertheless chastises to purity; but it can- 
not conquer the dead earth beyond; and there, 
circled and coiled under festering scum, the stagnant 
edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black 
slime, the accumulation of indolent years. Half a 
dozen men, with one day's work, could cleanse those 
pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and 
make every breath of summer air above them rich 
with cool balm; and every glittering wave me- 
dicinal, as if it ran, troubled of angels, from the 
porch of Bethesda. But that day's work is never 
given, nor will be; nor will any joy be possible to 
heart of man, for evermore, about those wells of 
English waters. 

When I last left them, I walked up slowly through 
the back streets of Croydon, from the old church to 
the hospital; and, just on the left, before coming 
up to the crossing of the High Street, there was 
a new public-house built. And the front of it was 
built in so wise manner, that a recess of two feet 
was left below its front windows, between them and 
the street-pavement — a recess too narrow for any 
possible use (for even if it had been occupied by a 
seat, as in old time it might have been, everybody 
walking along the street would have fallen over the 
legs of the reposing wayfarers). But, by way of 



Ruskin ^^^ 

making this two feet depth of freehold land more 
expressive of the dignity of an establishment for the 
sale of spirituous liquors, it was fenced from the 
pavement by an imposing iron railing, having four 
or five spear-heads to the yard of it, and six feet 
high; containing as much iron and iron-work, in- 
deed, as could well be put into the space; and by 
this stately arrangement, the little piece of dead 
ground within, between wall and street, became 
a protective receptacle of refuse; cigar-ends, and 
oyster-shells, and the like, such as an open-handed 
English street-populace habitually scatters from its 
presence, and was thus left, unsweepable by any 
ordinary methods. Now the iron bars which, use- 
lessly (or in great degree worse than uselessly), 
inclosed this bit of ground, and made it pestilent, 
represented a quantity of work which would have 
cleansed the Carshalton pools three times over — 
of work, partly cramped and deadly, in the mine; 
partly fierce ^ and exhaustive, at the furnace ; partly 

1 "A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near 
Wolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as 
the * keeper * of a blast-furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John 
Gardner, aged eighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty seven. 
The furnace contained four tons of molten iron, and an equal 
amount of cinders, and ought to have been run out at 7.30 p.m. 
But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and drinking, neg- 
lected their duty, and, in the meantime, the iron rose in the 
furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was contained. 
Just as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the 
furnace, the water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down 
its front and let loose on them the molten metal, which instan- 
taneously consumed Gardner. Snape, terribly burnt, and mad 
with pain, leaped into the canal and then ran home and fell dead 
on the threshold. Swift survived to reach the hospital, where he 
died too." (Ruskin's note.) 



364 Best English Essays 

foolish and sedentary, of ill-taught students making 
bad designs: work from the beginning to the last 
fruits of it, and in all the branches of it, venomous, 
deathful, and miserable. Now, how did it come to 
pass that this work was done instead of the other; 
that the strength and Hfe of the English operative 
were spent in defiling ground, instead of redeeming 
it; and in producing an entirely (in that place) 
valueless piece of metal, which can neither be eaten 
nor breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air, and 
pure water? 

There is but one reason for it, and at present a 
conclusive one — that the capitalist can charge per- 
centage on the work in the one case, and cannot in 
the other. If, having certain funds for supporting 
labour at my disposal, I pay men merely to keep my 
ground in order, my money is, in that function, 
spent once for all; but if I pay them to dig iron 
out of my ground, and work it, and sell it, I can 
charge rent for the ground, and percentage both on 
the manufacture and the sale, and make my capital 
profitable in these three by-ways. The greater part 
of the profitable investment of capital, in the present 
day, is in operations of this kind, in which the pub- 
lic is persuaded to buy something of no use to it, 
on production, or sale, of which, the capitalist may 
charge percentage; the said public remaining all 
the while under the persuasion that the percentages 
thus obtained are real national gains, whereas, they 
are merely filchings out of partially light pockets, 
to swell heavy ones. 

Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron railing, 
to make himself more conspicuous to drunkards. 
The public-house-keeper on the other side of the 



Ruskin 365 

way presently buys another railing, to out-rail him 
with. Both are, as to their relative attractiveness to 
customers of taste, just where they were before; 
but they have lost the price of the railings; which 
they must either themselves finally lose, or make 
their aforesaid customers of taste pay, by raising 
the price of their beer, or adulterating it. Either 
the publicans, or their customers, are thus poorer 
by precisely what the capitalist has gained ; and the 
value of the work itself, meantime, has been lost to 
the nation ; the iron bars in that form and place 
being wholly useless. It is this mode of taxation 
of the poor by the rich which is referred to else- 
where, in comparing the modern acquisitive power 
of capital with that of the lance and sword; 
the only difference being that the levy of black- 
mail in old times was by force, and is now by 
cozening. The old rider and reiver frankly quar- 
tered himself on the publican for the night; the 
modern one merely makes his lance into an iron 
spike, and persuades his host to buy it. One comes 
as an open robber, the other as a cheating peddler; 
but the result, to the injured person's pocket, is 
absolutely the same. Of course many useful indus- 
tries mingle with, and disguise the useless ones ; 
and in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle, 
there is a certain direct good. It is far better to 
spend four thousand pounds in making a good gun, 
and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in idle- 
ness. Only do not let it be called " political econ- 
omy." There is also a confused notion in the minds 
of many persons, that the gathering of the property 
of the poor into the hands of the rich does no ulti- 
mate harm; since, in whosesoever hands it may be, 



266 Best English Essays 

it must be spent at last, and thus, they think, return 
to the poor again. This fallacy has been again and 
again exposed; but grant the plea true, and the 
same apology may, of course, be made for black- 
mail, or any other form of robbery. It might be 
(though practically it never is) as advantageous 
for the nation that the robber should have the 
spending of the money he extorts, as that the per- 
son robbed should have spent it. But this is no 
excuse for the theft. If I were to put a turnpike 
on the road where it passes my own gate, and en- 
deavour to exact a shilling from every passenger, 
the public would soon do away with my gate, 
without listening to any plea on my part that " it 
was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I 
should spend their shillings, as that they themselves 
should." But if, instead of out-facing them with a 
turnpike I can only persuade them to come in and 
buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless thing, 
out of my ground, I may rob them to the same 
extent and be, moreover, thanked as a public bene- 
factor, and promoter of commercial prosperity. And 
this main question for the poor of England — for 
the poor of all countries — is wholly omitted in 
every common treatise on the subject of wealth. 
Even by the labourers themselves, the operation of 
capital is regarded only in its effect on their imme- 
diate interests ; never in the far more terrific power 
of its appointment of the kind and the object of 
labour. It matters little, ultimately, how much a 
labourer is paid for making anything; but it mat- 
ters fearfully what the thing is which he is com- 
pelled to make. If his labour is so ordered as to 
produce food, and fresh air, and fresh water, no 



Ruskin 367 

matter that his wages are low — the food and fresh 
air and water will be at last there; and he will 
at last get them. But if he is paid to destroy 
food and fresh air, or to produce iron bars in- 
stead of them — the food and air will finally not 
be there, and he will not get them, to his great 
and final inconvenience. So that, conclusively, in 
political as in household economy, the great ques- 
tion is, not so much what money you have in 
your 'pocket, as what you will biiy with it, and do 
with it. 

I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged 
in work of investigation must be, to hear my state- 
ments laughed at for years, before they are exam- 
ined or believed ; and 1 am generally content to wait 
the public's time. But it has not been without dis- 
pleased surprise that I have found myself totally 
unable, as yet, by aUy repetition, or illustration, to 
force this plain thought into my readers' heads — 
that the wealth of nations, as of men, consists in 
substance, not in ciphers ; and that the real good of 
all work, and of all commerce, depends on the final 
worth of the thing you make, or get by it. This is 
a practical enough statement, one would think : but 
the English public has been so possessed by its 
modern school of economists with the notion that 
Business is always good, whether it be busy in mis- 
chief or in benefit ; and that buying and selling are 
always salutary, whatever the intrinsic worth of 
what you buy or sell — that it seems impossible to 
gain so much as a patient hearing for any inquiry 
respecting the substantial result of our eager modern 
labours. I have never felt more checked by the 
sense of this impossibility than in arranging the 



368 Best English Essays 

heads of the following three lectures,^ which, 
though delivered at considerable intervals of time, 
and in different places, were not prepared without 
reference to each other. Their connection would, 
however, have been made far more distinct, if I 
had not been prevented, by what I feel to be another 
great difficulty in addressing English audiences, 
from enforcing, with any decision, the common, and 
to me the most important, part of their subjects. I 
chiefly desired (as I have just said) to question my 
hearers — operatives, merchants, and soldiers, as 
to the ultimate meaning of the business they had in 
hand ; and to know from them what they expected 
or intended their manufacture to come to, their sell- 
ing to come to, and their killing to come to. That 
appeared the first point needing determination before 
I could speak to them with any real utility or effect. 
**You craftsmen — salesmen — swordsmen — do but 
tell me clearly what you want, then, if I can say 
anything to help you, I will; and if not, I will 
account to you as I best may for my inability." But 
in order to put this question into any terms, one 
had first of all to face the difficulty just spoken of 
— to me for the present insuperable — the difficulty 
of knowing whether to address one's audience as 
believing, or not believing, in any other world than 
this. For if you address any average modern 
English company as believing in an Eternal life, 
and endeavour to draw any conclusions, from this 
assumed belief, as to their present business, they 
will forthwith tell you that what you say is very 
beautiful, but it is not practical. If, on the contrary, 

1 The titles are " Work," " Traffic," " War," not reprinted in 
this volume. 



Ruskin ^6^ 

you frankly address them as unbelievers in Eternal 
life, and try to draw any consequences from that 
unbelief — they immediately hold you for an ac- 
cursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet 
at you. And the more I thought over what I had 
got to say, the less I found I could say it, without 
some reference to this intangible or intractable part 
of the subject. It made all the difference, in assert- 
ing any principle of war, whether one assumed that 
a discharge of artillery would merely knead down a 
certain quantity of red clay into a level line, as in 
a brick field; or whether, out of every separately 
Christian-named portion of the ruinous heap, there 
went out, into the smoke and dead-fallen air of 
battle, some astonished condition of soul, unwillingly 
released. It made all the difference, in speaking 
of the possible range of commerce, whether one 
assumed that all bargains related only to visible 
property- — or whether property, for the present 
invisible, but nevertheless real, was elsewhere pur- 
chasable on other terms. It made all the difference 
in addressing a body of men subject to considerable 
hardship, and having to find some way out of it — 
whether one could confidently say to them, " My 
friends — you have only to die, and all will be 
right " ; or whether one had any secret misgiving 
that such advice was more blessed to him that gave, 
than to him that took it. And therefore the delib- 
erate reader will find throughout these lectures, a 
hesitation in driving points home, and a pausing 
short of conclusions which he will feel I would fain 
have come to; hesitation which arises wholly from 
this uncertainty of my hearers' temper. For I do 
not now speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the 

24 



2^0 Best English Essays 

time of first forward youth, in any proselyting tem- 
per, as desiring to persuade any one of what, in such 
matters, I thought myself; but, whomsoever I 
venture to address, I take for the time his creed as 
I find it, and endeavour to push it into such vital 
fruit as it seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with 
a great part of the existing English people, that they 
are in possession of a book which tells them, straight 
from the lips of God all they ought to do, and need 
to know. I have read that book, with as much care 
as most of them, for some forty years; and am 
thankful that, on those who trust it, I can press its 
pleadings. My endeavour has been uniformly to 
make them trust it more deeply than they do ; trust 
it, not in their own favourite verses only, but in the 
sum of all ; trust it not as a fetich or talisman, which 
they are to be saved by daily repetitions of; but as 
a Captain's order, to be heard and obeyed at their 
peril. I was always encouraged by supposing my 
hearers to hold such belief. To these, if to any, 
I once had hope of addressing, with acceptance, 
words which insisted on the guilt of pride, and the 
futility of avarice; from these, if from any, I once 
expected ratification of a political economy which 
asserted that the life was more than the meat, and 
the body than raiment; and these, it once seemed 
to me, I might ask, without accusation of fanaticism, 
not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the be- 
stowal of their heart's treasure, to separate them- 
selves from the crowd of whom it is written, " After 
all these things do the Gentiles seek." 

It cannot, however, be assumed, with any sem- 
blance of reason, that a general audience is now 
wholly, or even in majority, composed of these reli- 



Ruskin 371 

gious persons. A large portion must always consist 
of men who admit no such creed ; or who, at least, 
are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. And as, 
with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for 
honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief in 
life — with the so-called Infidel, I desired to plead 
for an honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief 
in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must 
either hereafter live, or hereafter die; fate may be 
bravely met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either 
expectation ; but never in hesitation between un- 
grasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We usually 
believe in immortality, so far as to avoid prepara- 
tion for death ; and in mortality, so far as to avoid 
preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a 
wise man will at least hold himself prepared for one 
or other of two events, of which one or other is 
inevitable ; and will have all things in order, for his 
sleep, or in readiness, for his awakening. 

Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judg- 
ment, if he determine to put them in order, as for 
sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an enviable 
state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an un- 
usual one. I know few Christians so convinced of 
the splendour of the rooms in their Father's house, 
as to be happier when their friends are called to 
those mansions, than they would have been if the 
Queen had sent for them to live at court: nor has 
the Church's most ardent " desire to depart, and be 
with Christ," ever cured it of the singular habit of 
putting on mourning for every person summoned 
to such departure. On the contrary, a brave belief 
in death has been assuredly held by many not 
ignoble persons, and it is a sign of the last depravity 



37^ Best English Essays 

in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a 
belief is inconsistent with either purity of character, 
or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, 
to any rational person, a conclusive reason for wast- 
ing the space of it which may be granted him ; nor 
does the anticipation of death to-morrow suggest, 
to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunk- 
enness to-day. To teach that there is no device in 
the grave, may indeed make the deviceless person 
more contented in his dulness ; but it will make the 
deviser only more earnest in devising ; nor is human 
conduct likely, in every case, to be purer under the 
conviction that all its evil may in a moment be par- 
doned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment re- 
deemed; and that the sigh of repentance, which 
purges the guilt of the past, will waft the soul into 
a felicity which forgets its pain — than it may be 
under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds, 
more probable, apprehension, that " what a man 
soweth that shall he also reap " — or others reap — 
when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no 
more in darkness, but lies down therein. 

But to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitter- 
ness of soul, or the offence given by the conduct 
of those who claim higher hope, may have rendered 
this painful creed the only possible one, there is an 
appeal to be made, more secure in its ground than 
any which can be addressed to happier persons. 
I would fain, if I might offencelessly, have spoken 
to them as if none others heard; and have said 
thus : Hear me, you dying men, who will soon be 
deaf for ever. For these others, at your right hand 
and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite 
existence, in which all their errors will be overruled, 



Ruskin 373 

and all their faults forgiven ; for these, who, stained 
and blackened in the battle smoke of mortality, have 
but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of 
death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove 
that is covered with silver, and her feathers like 
gold; for these, indeed, it may be permissible to 
waste their numbered moments, through faith in a 
future of innumerable hours ; to these, in their 
weakness, it may be conceded that they should 
tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of 
righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, one 
day, will be remembered no more. In them, it may 
be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor, 
over whom they know their Master is watching; 
and to leave those to perish temporarily who cannot 
perish eternally. But, for you, there is no such 
hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate, 
which you ordain for the wretched, you believe to 
be all their inheritance ; you may crush them, before 
the moth, and they will never rise to rebuke you — 
their breath, which fails for lack of food, once 
expiring, will never be recalled to whisper against 
you a word of accusing — they and you, as you 
think, shall lie down together in the dust, and the 
worms cover you — and for them there shall be no 
consolation, and on you no vengeance — only the 
question murmured above your grave : " Who shall 
repay him what he hath done ? " Is it therefore 
easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for 
which there is no remedy ? Will you take, wantonly, 
this little all of his life from your poor brother, and 
make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will 
you be readier to the injustice which can never be 
redressed; and niggardly of mercy which you can 



374 ^^^^ English Essays 

bestow but once, and which, refusing, you refuse 
for ever? I think better of you, even of the most 
selfish, than that you would do this, well understood. 
And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question 
becomes not less grave, in these curt limits. If your 
life were but a fever fit — the madness of a night, 
whose follies were all to be forgotten in the dawn, 
it might matter little how you fretted away the 
sickly hours — what toys you snatched at, or let fall 
— what visions you followed wistfully with the 
deceived eyes of sleepless frenzy. Is the earth only 
an hospital ? Play, if you care to play, on the floor 
of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what 
crowns please you ; gather the dust of it for treasure, 
and die rich in that, clutching at the black motes in 
the air with your dying hands — and yet, it may 
be well with you. But if this life be no dream, 
and the world no hospital; if all the peace and 
power and joy you can ever win, must be won now ; 
and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never — 
will you still, throughout the puny totality of your 
life, weary yourselves in the fire of vanity? If there 
is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none 
you might presently take? was this grass of the 
earth made green for your shroud only, not for your 
bed? and can you never lie down upon it, but only 
under it? The heathen, to whose creed you have 
returned, thought not so. They knew that life 
brought its contest, but they expected from it also 
the crown of all contest. No proud one ! no jewelled 
circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of 
the unmerited throne, only some few leaves of wild 
olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years 
of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought ; 



Ruskin 375 

but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god 
could give them. Seeking a greater than this, they 
had known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, 
not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found 
for them — only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. 
The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you — 
the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks with 
no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with 
soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, 
mixed with gray leaf and thorn-set stem; no fas- 
tening of diadem for you but with such sharp em- 
broidery ! But this, such as it is, you may win while 
yet you live; type of grey honour and sweet rest. 
Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed 
trust and requited love, and the sight of the peace 
of others, and the ministry to their pain; — these 
and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters 
and flowers of the earth beneath ; and mysteries and 
presences, innumerable, of living things, — these may 
yet be here your riches; untormenting and divine: 
serviceable for the life that now is ; nor, it may be, 
without promise of that which is to come. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD 



MATTHEW ARNOLD: 
THE INTELLECTUAL CRITIC 

WE have defined a critic as a writer whose 
chief interest is in his subject. He 
devotes himself to discovering and 
presenting the truth about that subject. If he is 
an impassioned critic like Ruskin, his writing is 
highly colored by his own personality. Let the 
element of passion be subjected to reason, and we 
have the true intellectual critic, whose motto is, 
Truth for Truth's sake, as well as, Truth for the 
sake of humanity. 

Matthew Arnold was perhaps the creator of 
pure, intellectual criticism in modern prose. 
Starting in life as a poet whose work as far as he 
went was comparable with Tennyson's, at thirty 
he became a school inspector, lecturer, and liter- 
ary critic. As a critic of the literary value of 
other men's work, both in poetry and prose, but 
especially in poetry, he is the first of English 
writers, ranking with the French critics of whom 
Sainte-Beuve is the type. Like them, he went 
back to Greek models. Indeed, he led the revival 
in English of the style of writing and the method 
of thinking of which Plato is the great exemplar. 



380 Best English Essays 

And now let us ask, What is the Greek critical 
style? 

I Matthew Arnold himself has differentiated the 
Hellenic and the Hebraic by saying that the 
Hellenic represents ideas, the Hebraic moral emo- 
tions. The one devotes itself to making truth 
prevail, the other to making goodness prevail. 
Moreover, to the Greek " Beauty is Truth, Truth 
Beauty," as Keats, the typical modern Grecian 
in poetry, has told us. Likewise, Truth and 
Beauty are Simplicity. The Greek artists de- 
pended on the natural lines of the human body 
for their notions of the beautiful in art, leaving 
to barbarous nations intricate design and gor- 
geous coloring. 

^, Matthew Arnold's style is severely simple and 
direct. He defines his terms with the utmost 
accuracy and care. He tries to remove from his 
mind all prejudice for or against. Before taking 
sides against a subject, he is careful to understand 
all that can be said in behalf of it. In his literary 
criticisms he comes as near telling us the truth 
about an author as perhaps any writer ever can. 
And then he passes on and tries to tell us the 
truth about ourselves, especially with regard to 
the element of simple beauty and perfection in 
our lives. This is the culture he would have us 
make to prevail.- 

Undoubtedly the essay by which Matthew 
Arnold is best known is that on " Sweetness 
and Light," which forms a chapter in his book 



Matthew Arnold 381 

" Culture and Anarchy." It was written at 
the point of his transition from purely literary 
criticism to his theological discussions such as 
" St. Paul and Protestantism." Its subject is 
almost identical with that of Ruskin in the intro- 
duction to " The Crown of Wild Olive," and 
the student of style will find great interest in 
comparing and contrasting the two methods of 
treatment. 

Though passion in Matthew Arnold is always 
subjected to reason, still passion exists in his 
nature just as truly as in Ruskin. Passion is 
the motive force that drives on man's interest, 
and without it no man could devote his life to 
a great cause with any success. Ruskin's pas- 
sion, often prevailing over his reason, leads him 
into many absurdities of statement, and even 
into points of view essentially false. Matthew 
Arnold's passion never allowed him to distort 
his statements, or swerve from what he saw as 
truth and accuracy. It did, however, drive him 
into many barren and unprofitable subjects, such, 
for example, as the later theological discussions 
into which he was led by the same motives that 
caused him to write " Culture and Anarchy." 

A later representative of the Greek spirit and 
literary style is Walter Pater. His writings are 
more polished, more severely simple, more purely 
classic than Matthew Arnold's; but he never 
rose to the range of subject and breadth of view 
that we find in the older writer, and, after all that 



38^ Scst English Essays 

may be said in behalf of style and purity, great 
men are to be measured by the greatness of their 
ideas. 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 
(Culture and Anarchy) 

THE disparagers of culture make its motive 
curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its 
motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture 
which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering 
of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten 
by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued 
either out of sheer vanity and ignorance or else as 
an engine of social and class distinction, separating 
its holder, like a badge or title, from other people 
who have not got it. No serious man would call 
this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at 
all. To find the real ground for the very different 
estimate which serious people will set upon culture, 
we must find some motive for culture in the terms 
of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a 
motive the word curiosity gives us. 

I have before now pointed out that we English 
do not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good 
sense as well as in a bad sense. With us the word 
is always used in a somewhat disapproving sense. 
A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things 
of the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he 
speaks of curiosity, but with us the word always 
conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying 
activity. In the " Quarterly Review," some little 
time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French 



Matthew Arnold 383 

critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate esti- 
mate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy 
consisted chiefly in this : that in our English way it 
left out of sight the double sense really involved 
in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to 
stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said 
that he was impelled in his operations as a critic by 
curiosity, and omitting either to perceive that M. 
Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with 
him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and 
not blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really 
to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. 
For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters 
which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is 
certainly a curiosity — a desire after the things of 
the mind simply for their own sakes and for the 
pleasure of seeing them as they are — which is, in 
an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, 
and the very desire to see things as they are implies 
a balance and regulation of mind which is not often 
attained without fruitful effort, and which is the 
very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of 
mind which is what we mean to blame when we 
blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : " The first 
motive which ought to impel us to study is the 
desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and 
to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent." 
This is the true ground to assign for the genuine 
scientific passion, however manifested, and for cul- 
ture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and 
it is a worthy ground, even though we let the term 
curiosity stand to describe it. 

But there is of culture another view, in which not 
solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see 



384 Best English Essays 

things as they are, natural and proper in an intelli- 
gent being, appears as the ground of it. There is 
a view in which all the love of our neighbour, the 
impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the 
desire for removing human error, clearing human 
confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble 
aspiration to leave the world better and happier than 
we found it, — motives eminently such as are called 
social, — come in as part of the grounds of culture, 
and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then 
properly described not as having its origin in curi- 
osity, but as having its origin in the love of perfec- 
tion; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the 
force, not merely or primarily of the scientific pas- 
sion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and 
social passion for doing good. As, in the first view 
of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's 
words : " To render an intelligent being yet more 
intelligent ! " so, in the second view of it, there is 
no better motto which it can have than these words 
of Bishop Wilson : " To make reason and the will 
of God prevail ! '* 

Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt 
to be overhasty in determining what reason and the 
will of God say, because its turn is for acting rather 
than thinking and it wants to be beginning to act; 
and whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, 
which proceed frorn its own state of development 
and share in all the imperfections and immaturities 
of this, for a basis of action ; what distinguishes 
culture is, that it is possessed by the scientific 
passion as well as by the passion of doing good; 
that it demands worthy notions of reason and the 
will of God, and does not readily suffer its own 



Matthew Arnold 385 

crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them. 
And knowing that no action or institution can be 
salutary and stable which is not based on reason 
and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and 
instituting, even with the great aim of diminishing 
human error and misery ever before its thoughts, 
but that it can remember that acting and instituting 
are of little use, unless we know how and what we 
ought to act and to institute. 

This culture is more interesting and more far- 
reaching than that other, which is founded solely 
on the scientific passion for knowing. But it needs 
times of faith and ardour, times when the intellec- 
tual horizon is opening and widening all round 
us, to flourish in. And is not the close and bounded 
intellectual horizon within which we have long lived 
and moved now lifting up, and are not new lights 
finding free passage to shine in upon us? For a 
long time there was no passage for them to make 
their way in upon us, and then it was of no use 
to think of adapting the world's action to them. 
Where was the hope of making reason and the will 
of God prevail among people who had a routine 
which they had christened reason and the will of 
God, in which they were inextricably bound, and 
beyond which they had no power of looking? But 
now the iron force of adhesion to the old routine, 
— social, political, religious, — has wonderfully 
yielded ; the iron force of exclusion of all which is 
new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, 
not that people should obstinately refuse to allow 
anything but their old routine to pass for reason 
and the will of God, but either that they should 
allow some novelty or other to pass for these too 

2S 



386 Best English Essays 

easily, or else that they should underrate the im- 
portance of them altogether, and think it enough to 
follow action for its own sake, without troubling 
themselves to make reason and the will of God pre- 
vail therein. Now, then, is the moment for culture 
to be of service, culture which believes in making 
reason and the will of God prevail, believes in per- 
fection, is the study and pursuit of perfection, and 
is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible exclusion 
of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its 
ideas, simply because they are new. 

The moment this view of culture is seized, the 
moment it is regarded not solely as the endeavour 
to see things as they are, to draw towards a knowl- 
edge of the universal order which seems to be in- 
tended and aimed at in the world, and which it is 
a man's happiness to go along with or his misery 
to go counter to, — to learn, in short, the will of 
God, — the moment, I say, culture is considered 
not merely as the endeavour to see and learn this, 
but as the endeavour, also, to make it prevail, the 
moral, social, and beneficent character of culture 
becomes manifest. The mere endeavour to see and 
learn the truth for our own personal satisfaction 
is indeed a commencement for making it prevail, 
a preparing the way for this, which always serves 
this, and is wrongly, therefore, stamped with blame 
absolutely in itself and not only in its caricature and 
degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped with 
blame, and disparaged with the dubious title of 
curiosity, because in comparison with this wider 
endeavour of such great and plain utility it looks 
selfish, petty, and unprofitable. 

And religion, the greatest and most important of 



Matthew Arnold 387 

the efforts by which the human race has manifested 
its impulse to perfect itself, — religion, that voice of 
the deepest human experience, — does not only 
enjoin and sanction the aim which is the great aim 
of culture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain 
what perfection is and to make it prevail ; but also, 
in determining generally in what human perfection 
consists, religion comes to a conclusion identical 
with that which culture — culture seeking the deter- 
mination of this question through all the voices of 
human experience which have been heard upon it, 
of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well 
as of religion, in order to give a greater fulness and 
certainty to its solution — likewise reaches. Re- 
ligion says: The kingdom of God is within you; 
and culture, in like manner, places human perfection 
in an internal condition, in the growth and pre- 
dominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished 
from our animality. It places it in the ever-increas- 
ing efficacy and in the general harmonious expan- 
sion of those gifts of thought and feeling, which 
make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of 
human nature. As I have said on a former occa- 
sion : " It is in making endless additions to itself, 
in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless 
growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the 
human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, 
culture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true 
value of culture." Not a having and a resting, but 
a growing and a becoming, is the character of per- 
fection as culture conceives it; and here, too, it 
coincides with religion. 

And because men are all members of one great 
whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature 



388 Best English Essays 

will not allow one member to be indifferent to the 
rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the 
rest, the expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea 
of perfection which culture forms, must be a general 
expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives it, is 
not possible while the individual remains isolated. 
The individual is required, under pain of being 
stunted and enfeebled in his own development if 
he disobeys, to carry others along with him in his 
march towards perfection, to be continually doing 
all he can to enlarge and increase the volume of 
the human stream sweeping thitherward. And here, 
once more, culture lays on us the same obligation 
as religion, which says, as Bishop Wilson has ad- 
mirably put it, that " to promote the kingdom of 
God is to increase and hasten one's own happiness." 

But, finally, perfection — as culture from a 
thorough disinterested study of human nature and 
human experience learns to conceive it — is a har- 
monious expansion of all the powers which make 
the beauty and worth of human nature, and is not 
consistent with the over-development of any one 
power at the expense of the rest. Here culture goes 
beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived 
by us. 

If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of 
harmonious perfection, general perfection, and per- 
fection which consists in becoming something rather 
than in having something, in an inward condition 
of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of 
circumstances, — it is clear that culture, instead of 
being the frivolous and useless thing which Mr. 
Bright, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, and many other 
Liberals are apt to call it, has a very important 



Matthew Arnold 389 

function to fulfil for mankind. And this function 
is particularly important in our modern world, of 
which the whole civilisation is, to a much greater 
degree than the civilisation of Greece and Rome, 
mechanical and external, and tends constantly to 
become more so. But above all in our own country 
has culture a weighty part to perform, because here 
that mechanical character, which civilisation tends 
to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent 
degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of perfec- 
tion, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this 
country with some powerful tendency which thwarts 
them and sets them at defiance. The idea of per- 
fection as an inward condition of the mind and 
spirit is at variance with the mechanical and mate- 
rial civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as 
I have said, so much in esteem as with us. The 
idea of perfection as a general expansion of the 
human family is at variance with our strong indivi- 
dualism, our hatred of all Hmits to the unrestrained 
swing of the individual's personality, our maxim of 
" every man for himself." Above all, the idea of 
perfection as a harmonious expansion of human 
nature is at variance with our want of flexibility, 
with our inaptitude for seeing more than one side 
of a thing, with our intense energetic absorption in 
the particular pursuit we happen to be following. 
So culture has a rough task to achieve in this 
country. Its preachers have, and are likely long to 
have, a hard time of it, and they will much oftener 
be regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant 
or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends and bene- 
factors. That, however, will not prevent their 
doing in the end good service if they persevere. 



390 Best English Essays 

And, meanwhile, the mode of action they have to 
pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight 
against, ought to be made quite clear for every one 
to see, who may be willing to look at the matter 
attentively and dispassionately. 

Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting 
danger; often in machinery most absurdly dispro- 
portioned to the end which this machinery, if it is 
to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in 
machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself. 
What is freedom but machinery? what is popula- 
tion but machinery? what is coal but machinery? 
what are railroads but machinery? what is wealth 
but machinery? what are, even, religious organisa- 
tions but machinery? Now almost every voice in 
England is accustomed to speak of these things as 
if they were precious ends in themselves, and there- 
fore had some of the characters of perfection indis- 
putably joined to them. I have before now noticed 
Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for proving the 
greatness and happiness of England as she is, and 
for quite stopping the mouths of all gainsayers. 
Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reiterating this 
argument of his, so I do not know why I should be 
weary of noticing it. " May not every man in 
England say what he likes ? " — Mr. Roebuck per- 
petually asks ; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, 
and when every man may say what he likes, our 
aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspira- 
tions of culture, which is the study of perfection, 
are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they 
may say what they like, is worth saying, — has 
good in it, and more good than bad. In the same 
way the "Times," replying to some foreign stric- 



Matthew Arnold 391 

tures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the 
English abroad, urges that the EngHsh ideal is that 
every one should be free to do and to look just as 
he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to 
make what each raw person may like the rule by 
which he fashions himself ; but to draw ever nearer 
to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, 
and becoming, and to get the raw person to like 
that. 

And in the same way with respect to railroads 
and coal. Every one must have observed the 
strange language current during the late discussions 
as to the possible failures of our supplies of coal. 
Our coal, thousands of people were saying, is the 
real basis of our national greatness ; if our coal 
runs short, there is an end of the greatness of 
England. But what is greatness? — culture makes 
us ask. Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy 
to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the 
outward proof of possessing greatness is that we 
excite love, interest, and admiration. If England 
were swallowed up by the sea to-morrow, which of 
the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite 
the love, interest, and admiration of mankind, — 
would most, therefore, show the evidences of hav- 
ing possessed greatness, — the England of the last 
twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time 
of splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, and 
our industrial operations depending on coal, were 
very little developed ? Well, then, what an unsound 
habit of mind it must be which makes us talk of 
things like coal or iron as constituting the greatness 
of England, and how salutary a friend is culture, 
bent on seeing things as they are, and thus dissipat- 



392 Best English Essays 

ing delusions of this kind and fixing standards of 
perfection that are real! 

Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious 
works for material advantage are directed, — the 
commonest of commonplaces tells us how men are 
always apt to regard wealth as a precious end in 
itself; and certainly they have never been so apt 
thus to regard it as they are in England at the 
present time. Never did people believe anything 
more firmly than nine Englishmen out of ten at the 
present day believe that our greatness and welfare 
are proved by our being so very rich. Now, the 
use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its 
spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth 
as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter 
of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, 
but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it 
were not for this purging effect wrought upon our 
minds by culture, the whole world, the future as 
well as the present, would inevitably belong to the 
Philistines. The people who believe most that our 
greatness and welfare are proved by our being very 
rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to 
becoming rich, are just the very people whom we 
call Philistines. Culture says : " Consider these 
people, then, their way of life, their habits, their 
manners, the very tones of their voice ; look at them 
attentively; observe the literature they read, the 
things which give them pleasure, the words which 
come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which 
make the furniture of their minds; would any 
Amount of wealth be worth having with the condi- 
tion that one was to become just like these people 
by having it ? " And thus culture begets a dissat- 



Matthew Arnold 393 

isfaction which is of the highest possible value in 
stemming the common tide of men's thoughts in a 
wealthy and industrial community, and which saves 
the future, as one may hope, from being vulgarised, 
even if it cannot save the present. 

Population, again, and bodily health and vigour, 
are things which are nowhere treated in such an un- 
intelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as in Eng- 
land. Both are really machinery; yet how many 
people all around us do We see rest in them and fail 
to look beyond them ! Why, one has heard people, 
fresh from reading certain articles of the " Times " 
on the Registrar-General's returns of marriages and 
births in this country, who would talk of our large 
English families in quite a solemn strain, as if they 
had something in itself beautiful, elevating, and 
meritorious in them; as if the British Philistine 
would have only to present himself before the Great 
Judge with his twelve children, in order to be 
received among the sheep as a matter of right ! 

But bodily health and vigour, it may be said, are 
not to be classed with wealth and population as mere 
machinery; they have a more real and essential 
value. True ; but only as they are more intimately 
connected with a perfect spiritual condition than 
wealth or population are. The moment we disjoin 
them from the idea of a perfect spiritual condition, 
and pursue them, as we do pursue them, for their 
own sake and as ends in themselves, our worship of 
them becomes as mere worship of machinery, as our 
worship of wealth or population, and as unintelli- 
gent and vulgarising a worship as that is. Every 
one with anything like an adequate idea of human 
perfection has distinctly marked this subordination 



394 ^^st English Essays 

to higher and spiritual ends of the cultivation of 
bodily vigour and activity. " Bodily exercise profit- 
eth little ; but godliness is profitable unto all things," 
says the author of the Epistle to Timothy. And the 
utilitarian Franklin says just as expHcitly: — *' Eat 
and drink such an exact quantity as suits the consti- 
tution of thy body, in reference to the services of 
the mind." But the point of view of culture, keep- 
ing the mark of human perfection simply and 
broadly in view, and not assigning to this perfec- 
tion, as religion or utilitarianism assigns to it, a 
special and limited character, this point of view, I 
say, of culture is best given by these words of 
Epictetus : — "It is a sign of d<^via/' says he, — 
that is, of a nature not finely tempered, — " to give 
yourselves up to things which relate to the body; 
to make, for instance, a great fuss about exercise, 
a great fuss about eating, a great fuss about drink- 
ing, a great fuss about walking, a great fuss about 
riding. All these things ought to be done merely 
by the way : the formation of the spirit and charac- 
ter must be our real concern." This is admirable; 
and, indeed, the Greek word €v</)via, a finely tem- 
pered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection 
as culture brings us to conceive it: a harmonious 
perfection, a perfection in which the characters of 
beauty and intelligence are both present, which 
unites " the two noblest of things," — as Swift, who 
of one of the two, at any rate, had himself all too 
little, most happily calls them in his " Battle of the 
Books," — " the two noblest of things, sweetness 
and light." The €v<^v7i? is the man who tends 
towards sweetness and light ; the af^vij?, on the 
other hand, is our Philistine. The immense spir- 



Matthew Arnold 395 

itual significance of the Greeks is due to their having 
been inspired with this central and happy idea of 
the essential character of human perfection ; and 
Mr. Bright's misconception of culture, as a smatter- 
ing of Greek and Latin, comes itself, after all, from 
this wonderful significance of the Greeks having 
affected the very machinery of our education, and 
is in itself a kind of homage to it. 

In thus making sweetness and light to be charac- 
ters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with 
poetry, follows one law with poetry. Far more than 
on our freedom, our population, and our indus- 
trialism, many amongst us rely upon our religious 
organisations to save us. I have called religion a 
yet more important manifestation of human nature 
than poetry, because it has worked on a broader 
scale for perfection, and with greater masses of 
men. But the idea of beauty and of a human nature 
perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of 
poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it has 
not yet had the success that the idea of conquering 
the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human 
nature perfect on the moral side, — which is the 
dominant idea of religion, — has been enabled to 
have ; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious 
idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern 
the other. 

The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which 
religion and poetry are one, in which the idea of 
beauty and of a human nature perfect on all sides 
adds to itself a religious and devout energy, and 
works in the strength of that, is on this account of 
such surpassing interest and instructiveness for us, 
though it was, — as, having regard to the human 



396 Best English Essays 

race in general, and, indeed, having regard to the 
Greeks themselves, we must own, — a premature 
attempt, an attempt which for success needed the 
moral and religious fibre in humanity to be more 
braced and developed than it had yet been. But 
Greece did not err in having the idea of beauty, har- 
mony, and complete human perfection, so present 
and paramount. It is impossible to have this idea 
too present and paramount; only, the moral fibre 
must be braced^ too. And we, because we have 
braced the moral fibre, are not on that account in 
the right way, if at the same time the idea of beauty, 
harmony, and complete human perfection, is want- 
ing or misapprehended amongst us ; and evidently 
it is wanting or misapprehended at present. And 
when we rely as we do on our religious organisa- 
tions, which in themselves do not and cannot give 
us this idea, and think we have done enough if we 
make them spread and prevail, then, I say, we fall 
into our common fault of overvaluing machinery. 

Nothing is more common than for people to con- 
found the inward peace and satisfaction which fol- 
lows the subduing of the obvious faults of our 
animality with what I may call absolute inward 
peace and satisfaction, — the peace and satisfaction 
which are reached as we draw near to complete spir- 
itual perfection, and not merely to moral perfection, 
or rather to relative moral perfection. No people in 
the world have done more and struggled more to 
attain this relative moral perfection than our Eng- 
lish race has. For no people in the world has the 
command to resist the devil, to overcome the wicked 
one, in the nearest and most obvious sense of those 
words, had such a pressing force and reality. And 



Matthew Arnold 397 

we have had our reward, not only in the great 
worldly prosperity which our obedience to this com- 
mand has brought us, but also, and far more, in 
great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me 
few things are more pathetic than to see people, on 
the strength of the inward peace and satisfaction 
which their rudimentary efforts towards perfection 
have brought them, employ, concerning their in- 
complete perfection and the religious organisations 
within which they have found it, language which 
properly applies only to complete perfection, and is 
a far-off echo of the human soul's prophecy of it. 
Religion itself, I need hardly say, supplies them in 
abundance with this grand language. And very 
freely do they use it; yet it is really the severest 
possible criticism of such an incomplete perfection 
as alone we have yet reached through our religious 
organisations. 

The impulse of the English race towards moral 
development and self-conquest has nowhere so 
powerfully manifested itself as in Puritanism. No- 
where has Puritanism found so adequate an ex^ 
pression as in the religious organisation of the 
Independents. The modern Independents have a 
newspaper, the " Nonconformist," written with 
great sincerity and ability. The motto, the stan- 
dard, the profession of faith which this organ of 
theirs carries aloft, is : *' The Dissidence of Dissent 
and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion." 
There is sweetness and light, and an ideal of com- 
plete harmonious human perfection ! One need 
not go to culture and poetry to find language to 
judge it. Religion, with its instinct for perfection, 
supplies language to judge it, language, too, which 



398 Best English Essays 

is in our mouths every day. " Finally, be of one 
mind, united in feeling," says St. Peter. There is 
an ideal which judges the Puritan ideal : " The 
Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the 
Protestant religion ! " And religious organisations 
like this are what people believe in, rest in, would 
give their lives for! Such, I say, is the wonderful 
virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of hav- 
ing conquered even the plain faults of our animality, 
that the religious organisation which has helped us 
to do it can seem to us something precious, salutary, 
and to be propagated, even when it wears such a 
brand of imperfection on its forehead as this. And 
men have got such a habit of giving to the language 
of religion a special application, of making it a 
mere jargon, that for the condemnation which re- 
ligion itself passes on the shortcomings of their 
religious organisations they have no ear; they are 
sure to cheat themselves and to explain this con- 
demnation away. They can only be reached by the 
criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a lan- 
guage not to be sophisticated, and resolutely testing 
these organisations by the ideal of a human perfec- 
tion complete on all sides, applies to them. 

But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, 
are again and again failing, and failing conspicu- 
ously, in the necessary first stage to a harmonious 
perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious 
faults of our animaHty, which it is the glory of 
these religious organisations to have helped us to 
subdue. True, they do often so fail. They have 
often been without the virtues as well as the faults 
of the Puritan ; it has been one of their dangers 
that they so felt the Puritan's faults that they too 



Matthew Arnold 399 

much neglected the practice of his virtues. I will 
not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan's ex- 
pense. They have often failed in morality, and 
morality is indispensable. And they have been pun- 
ished for their failure, as the Puritan has been 
rewarded for his performance. They have been 
punished wherein they erred; but their ideal of 
beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature 
complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of 
perfection still; just as the Puritan's ideal of per- 
fection remains narrow and inadequate, although 
for what he did well he has been richly rewarded. 
Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim 
Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of perfec- 
tion are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves 
Shakespeare or Virgil — souls in whom sweetness 
and light, and all that in human nature is most 
humane, were eminent — accompanying them on 
their voyage, and think what intolerable company 
Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them! 
In the same way let us judge the religious organ- 
isations which we see all around us. Do not let 
us deny the good and the happiness which they 
have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see 
clearly that their idea of human perfection is nar- 
row and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of 
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant 
religion will never bring humanity to its true goal. 
As I said with regard to wealth : Let us look at 
the life of those who live in and for it, — so I say 
with regard to the religious organisations. Look at 
the life imaged in such a newspaper as the " Non- 
conformist," — a life of jealousy of the Establish- 
ment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels. 



400 Best English Essays 

sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of a 
human life completing itself on all sides, and as- 
piring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and 
perfection ! 

Another newspaper, representing, like the " Non- 
conformist," one of the religious organisations of 
this country, was a short time ago giving an account 
of the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, and of 
all the vice and hideousness which was to be seen 
in that crowd ; and then the writer turned suddenly 
round upon Professor Huxley, and asked him how 
he proposed to cure all this vice and hideousness 
without religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask 
the asker this question : And how do you propose 
to cure it with such a religion as yours? How is 
the ideal of a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so 
incomplete, so narrow, so far removed from a true 
and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as is the 
^ life of your religious organisation as you yourself 
reflect it, to conquer and transform all this vice 
and hideousness? Indeed, the strongest plea for 
the study of perfection as pursued by culture, the 
clearest proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea 
of perfection held by the religious organisations, 
— expressing, as I have said, the most widespread 
effort which the human race has yet made after 
perfection, — is to be found in the state of our life 
and society with these in possession of it, and hav- 
ing been in possession of it I know not how many 
hundred years. We are all of us included in some 
religious organisation or other ; we all call ourselves, 
in the sublime and aspiring language of religion 
which I have before noticed, children of God, 
Children of God ;^-^ it is an immense pretension! 



Matthew Arnold 401 

— and how are we to justify it? By the works 
which we do, and the words which we speak. And 
the work which we collective children of God do, 
our grand centre of life, our city which we have 
builded for us to dwell in, is London! London, 
with its unutterable external hideousness, and with 
its internal canker of publice egestas, privatim 
opulcntia,^ — to use the words which Sallust puts 
into Cato's mouth about Rome, — unequalled in 
the world! The word, again, which we children 
of God speak, the voice which most hits our col- 
lective thought, the newspaper with the largest 
circulation in England, nay, with the largest circu- 
lation in the whole world, is the "Daily Telegraph" ! 
I say that when our religious organisations — which 
I admit to express the most considerable effort after 
perfection that our race has yet made — land us in 
no better result than this, it is high time to examine 
carefully their idea of perfection, to see whether it 
does not leave out of account sides and forces of 
human nature which we might turn to great use; 
whether it would not be more operative if it were 
more complete. And I say that the English reliance 
on our religious organisations and on their ideas of 
human perfection just as they stand, is like our 
reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on 
population, on coal, on wealth, — mere belief in ma- 
chinery, and unfruitful ; and that it is wholesomely 
counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as 
they are, and on drawing the human race onwards 
to a more complete, a harmonious perfection. 

Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of 
perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the 

1 Poverty for the commonwealth, riches for the individual. 
26 



402 Best English Essays 

will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by 
its attitude towards all this machinery, even while 
it insists that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the 
mischief men do themselves by their blind belief in 
some machinery or other, — whether it is wealth 
and industrialism, or whether it is the cultivation 
of bodily strength and activity, or whether it is a 
political organisation, — or whether it is a religious 
organisation, — oppose with might and main the 
tendency to this or that political and religious or- 
ganisation, or to games and athletic exercises, or 
to wealth and industrialism, and try violently to 
stop it. But the flexibility which sweetness and 
light give, and which is one of the rewards of cul- 
ture pursued in good faith, enables a man to see 
that a tendency may be necessary, and even, as a 
preparation for something in the future, salutary, 
and yet that the generations or individuals who obey 
this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they fall short 
of the hope of perfection by following it ; and that its 
mischiefs are to be criticised, lest it should take too 
firm a hold and last after it has served its purpose. 
Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at 
Paris, — and others have pointed out the same 
thing, — how necessary is the present great move- 
ment towards wealth and industrialism, in order 
to lay broad foundations of material well-being for 
the society of the future. The worst of these justi- 
fications is, that they are generally addressed to the 
very people engaged, body and soul, in the move- 
ment in question ; at all events, that they are always 
seized with the greatest avidity by these people, and 
taken by them as quite justifying their life; and 
that thus they tend to harden them in their sins. 



Matthew Arnold 403 

Now, culture admits the necessity of the movement 
towards fortune-making and exaggerated industrial- 
ism, readily allows that the future may derive bene- 
fit from it; but insists, at the same time, that the 
passing generations of industrialists — forming, for 
the most part, the stout main body of Philistinism 
— are sacrificed to it. In the same way, the result 
of all the games and sports which occupy the pass- 
ing generation of boys and young men may be the 
establishment of a better and sounder physical type 
for the future to work with. Culture does not set 
itself against the games and sports ; it congratulates 
the future, and hopes it will make a good use of its 
improved physical basis ; but it points out that our 
passing generation of boys and young men is, mean- 
time, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary 
to develop the moral fibre of the English race. Non- 
conformity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domi- 
nation over men's minds and to prepare the way 
for freedom of thought in the distant future; still, 
culture points out that the harmonious perfection of 
generations of Puritans and Nonconformists have 
been, in consequence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech 
may be necessary for the society of the future, but 
the young lions of the " Daily Telegraph " in the 
meanwhile are sacrificed. A voice for every man in 
his country's government may be necessary for the 
society of the future, but meanwhile Mr. Beales and 
Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed. 

Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults ; 
and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isola- 
tion, in want of hold upon the modern world. Yet 
we in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and 
sweetness of that beautiful place, have not failed to 



404 Best English Essays 

seize one truth, — the truth that beauty and sweet- 
ness are essential characters of a complete human 
perfection. When I insist on this, I am all in the 
faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that 
this our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our 
sentiment against hideousness and rawness, has been 
at the bottom of our attachment to so many beaten 
causes, of our opposition to so many triumphant 
movements. And the sentiment is true, and has 
never been wholly defeated, and has shown its power 
even in its defeat. We have not won our political 
battles, we have not carried our main points, we 
have not stopped our adversaries' advance, we have 
not marched victoriously with the modern world; 
but we have told silently upon the mind of the coun- 
try, we have prepared currents of feeling which sap 
our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we 
have kept up our own communications with the 
future. Look at the course of the great movement 
which shook Oxford to its centre some thirty years 
ago! It was directed, as any one who reads Dr. 
Newman's " Apology " may see, against what in 
one word may be called *' Liberalism." Liberalism 
prevailed; it was the appointed force to do the 
work of the hour; it was necessary, it was inevit- 
able that it should prevail. The Oxford movement 
was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on 
every shore: — 

Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? ^ 

But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw 
it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement ? It 

1 Interpreted by the preceding clause. Literally, " What 
region in the world is not full of our labor " ? 



Matthew Arnold 405 

was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for 
the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 
1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the 
social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, 
and the making of large industrial fortunes ; in the 
religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the 
Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not 
say that other and more intelligent forces than this 
were not opposed to the Oxford movement: but 
this was the force which really beat it; this was 
the force which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting 
with; this was the force which till only the other 
day seemed to be the paramount force in this coun- 
try, and to be in possession of the future; this was 
the force whose achievements fill Mr. Lowe with 
such inexpressible admiration, and whose rule he 
was so horror-struck to see threatened. And where 
is this great force of Philistinism now ? It is thrust 
into the second rank, it is become a power of yester- 
day, it has lost the future. A new power has sud- 
denly appeared, a power which it is impossible yet 
to judge fully, but which is certainly a wholly dif- 
ferent force from middle-class liberalism; different 
in its cardinal points of belief, different in its tend- 
encies in every sphere. It loves and admires neither 
the legislation of middle-class Parliaments, nor the 
local self-government of middle-class vestries, nor 
the unrestricted competition of middle-class indus- 
trialists, nor the dissidence of middle-class Dissent 
and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant re- 
ligion. I am not now praising this new force, or 
saying that its own ideals are better; all I say is, 
that they are wholly different. And who will esti- 
mate how much the currents of feeling created by 



4o6 Best English Essays 

Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire for 
beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep 
aversion it manifested to the hardness and vul- 
garity of middle-class liberalism, the strong light 
it turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions 
of middle-class Protestantism, — who will estimate 
how much all these contributed to swell the tide of 
secret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground 
under self-confident liberalism of the last thirty 
years, and has prepared the way for its sudden 
collapse and supersession? It is in this manner 
that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweet- 
ness conquers, and in this manner long may it con- 
tinue to conquer! 

In this manner it works to the same end as cul- 
ture, and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. 
I have said that the new and more democratic force 
which is now superseding our old middle-class lib- 
eralism cannot yet be rightly judged. It has its 
main tendencies still to form. We hear promises 
of its giving us administrative reform, law reform, 
reform of education, and I know not what; but 
those promises come rather from its advocates, 
wishing to make a good plea for it and to justify 
it for superseding middle-class Hberalism, than from 
clear tendencies which it has itself yet developed. 
But meanwhile it has plenty of well-intentioned 
friends against whom culture may with advantage 
continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human per- 
fection; that this is an inward spiritual activity, 
having for its characters increased szveetness, in- 
creased light, increased life, increased sympathy. 
Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, the 
world of middle-class liberalism and the world of 



Matthew Arnold 407 

democracy, but who brings most of his ideas from 
the world of middle-class liberalism in which he 
was bred, always inclines to inculcate that faith in 
machinery to which, as we have seen, Englishmen 
are so prone, and which has been the bane of 
middle-class liberalism. He complains with a sor- 
rowful indignation of people who " appear to have 
no proper estimate of the value of the franchise " ; 
he leads his disciples to believe — what the English- 
man is always too ready to believe — that the hav- 
ing a vote, like the having a large family, or a large 
business, or large muscles, has in itself some edify- 
ing and perfecting effect upon human nature. Or 
else he cries out to the democracy, — " the men," 
as he calls them, " upon whose shoulders the great- 
ness of England rests," — he cries out to them : 
" See what you have done ! I look over this coun- 
try and see the cities you have built, the railroads 
you have made, the manufactures you have pro- 
duced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the 
greatest mercantile navy the world has ever seen ! 
I see that you have converted by your labours what 
was once a wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful 
garden; I know that you have created this wealth, 
and are a nation whose name is a word of power 
throughout all the world." Why, this is just the 
very style of laudation with which Mr. Roebuck 
or Mr. Lowe debauches the minds of the middle 
classes, and makes such Philistines of them. It is 
the same fashion of teaching a man to value him- 
self not on what he is, not on his progress in sweet- 
ness and light, but on the number of the railroads 
he has constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle 
he has built. Only the middle classes are told they 



4o8 Best English Essays 

have done it all with their energy, self-reliance, and 
capital, and the democracy are told they have done 
it all with their hands and sinews. But teaching 
the democracy to put its trust in achievements of 
this kind is merely training them to be Philistines 
to take the place of the Philistines whom they are 
superseding; and they too, like the middle class, 
will be encouraged to sit down at the banquet of 
the future without having on a wedding garment, 
and nothing excellent can then come from them. 
Those who know their besetting faults, those who 
have watched them and listened to them, or those 
who will read the instructive account recently given 
of them by one of themselves, the '' Journeyman 
Engineer," will agree that the idea which culture 
sets before us of perfection — an increased spiritual 
activity, having for its characters increased sweet- 
ness, increased light, increased life, increased sym- 
pathy — is an idea which the new democracy needs 
far more than the idea of the blessedness of the 
franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own indus- 
trial performances. 

Other well-meaning friends of this new power 
are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class 
Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally allur- 
ing to the feet of democracy, though in this country 
they are novel and untried ways. I may call them 
the ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with 
the past, abstract systems of renovation applied 
wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and 
white for elaborating down to the very smallest 
details a rational society for the future, — these 
are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison 
and other disciples of Comte — one of them, Mr. 



i Matthew Arnold 409 

Congreve, is an old friend of mine, and I am glad 
to have an opportunity of publicly expressing my 
respect for his talents and character — are among 
the friends of democracy who are for leading it in 
paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very 
hostile to culture, and from a natural enough mo- 
tive ; for culture is the eternal opponent of the two 
things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism, 
— its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract 
system. Culture is always assigning to system- 
makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of 
human destiny than their friends like. A current 
in people's minds sets towards new ideas; people 
are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of Phil- 
istine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other; and 
some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the 
real merit of having early and strongly felt and 
helped the new current, but who brings plenty of 
narrowness and mistakes of his own into his feel- 
ing and help of it, is credited with being the 
author of the whole current, the fit person to be 
entrusted with its regulation and to guide the hu- 
man race. 

The excellent German historian of the mythology 
of Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome 
under the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the 
god of light, healing, and reconciliation, will have 
us observe that it was not so much the Tarquins 
who brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, 
as a current in the mind of the Roman people 
which set powerfully at that time towards a new 
worship of this kind, and away from the old run 
of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar 
way, culture directs our attention to the natural 



4IO Best English Essays 

current there is in human affairs, and to its con- 
tinual working, and will not let us rivet our faith 
upon any one man and his doings. It makes us 
see not only his good side, but also how much in 
him was of necessity limited and transient; nay, 
it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased 
freedom and of an ampler future, in so doing. 

I remember, when I was under the influence of a 
mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the 
mind of a man who was the very incarnation of 
sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable, 
it seems to me, whom America has yet produced, — 
Benjamin Franklin, — I remember the relief with 
which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's 
imperturbable common-sense, I came upon a pro- 
ject of his for a new version of the Book of Job, 
to replace the old version, the style of which, says 
Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less agree- 
able. " I give," he continues, *' a few verses, which 
may serve as a sample of the kind of version I 
would recommend." We all recollect the famous 
verse in our translation : " Then Satan answered the 
Lord and said : ' Doth Job fear God for nought ? ' " 
Franklin makes this: *' Does your Majesty imagine 
that Job's good conduct is the effect of mere per- 
sonal attachment and affection ? " I well remember 
how, when first I read that, I drew a deep breath 
of relief, and said to myself : " After all, there is a 
stretch of humanity beyond Franklin's victorious 
good sense ! " So, after hearing Bentham cried 
loudly up as the renovator of modern society, and 
Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as the rulers 
of our future, I open the '' Deontology." There I 
read : " While Xenophon was writing his history 



Matthew Arnold 411 

and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato 
were talking nonsense under pretence of talking 
wisdom and morality. This morality of theirs con- 
sisted in words ; this wisdom of theirs was the de- 
nial of matters known to every man's experience." 
From the moment of reading that, I am delivered 
from the bondage of Bentham! the fanaticism of 
his adherents can touch me no longer. I feel the 
inadequacy of his mind and ideas for supplying the 
rule of human society, for perfection. 

Culture tends always thus to deal with the men 
of a system, of disciples, of a school; with men 
like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. 
However much it may find to admire in these per- 
sonages, or in some of them, it nevertheless remem- 
bers the text : '' Be not ye called Rabbi ! " and it 
soon passes on from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism 
loves a Rabbi ; it does not want to pass on from its 
Rabbi in pursuit of a future and still unreached per- 
fection; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand 
for perfection, that they may with the more author- 
ity recast the world ; and for Jacobinism, therefore, 
culture — eternally passing onwards and seeking — 
is an impertinence and an offence. But culture, just 
because it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to 
impose on us a man with limitations and errors of 
his own along with the true ideas of which he is 
the organ, really does the world and Jacobinism 
itself a service. 

So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the 
past and of those whom it makes liable for the 
sins of the past, cannot away with the inexhausti- 
ble indulgence proper to culture, the consideration 
of circumstances, the severe judgment of actions 



412 Best English Essays 

joined to the merciful judgment of persons. " The 
man of culture is in politics," cries Mr. Frederic 
Harrison, *'one of the poorest mortals alive!" Mr. 
Frederic Harrison wants to be doing business, and 
he complains that the man of culture stops him with 
a " turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, 
and indecision in action." Of what use is culture, 
he asks, except for '' a critic of new books or a pro- 
fessor of belles-lettres "f Why, it is of use because, 
in presence of the fierce exasperation which breathes, 
or rather, I may say, hisses through the whole pro- 
duction in which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that 
question, it reminds us that the perfection of hu- 
man nature is sweetness and light. It is of use 
because, like religion, — that other effort after per- 
fection, — it testifies that, where bitter envying 
and strife are, there is confusion and every evil 
work. 

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of 
sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness 
and light, works to make reason and the will of 
God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who 
works for hatred, works only for confusion. Cul- 
ture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; 
culture has one great passion, the passion for sweet- 
ness and light. It has one even yet greater ! — the 
passion for making them prevail It is not satisfied 
till we all come to a perfect man ; it knows that the 
sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect 
until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity 
are touched with sweetness and light. If I have 
not shrunk from saying that we must work for 
sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from 
saying that we must have a broad basis, must have 



Matthew Arnold 413 

sweetness and light for as many as possible. Again 
and again I have insisted how those are the happy 
moments of humanity, how those are the marking 
epochs of a people's life, how those are the flower- 
ing times for literature and art and all the creative 
power of genius, when there is a national glow of 
life and thought, when the whole of society is in 
the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible 
to beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real 
thought and real beauty; real sweetness and real 
light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses, 
as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and 
adapted in the way they think proper for the actual 
condition of the masses. The ordinary popular lit- 
erature is an example of this way of working on 
the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctri- 
nate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments 
constituting the creed of their own profession or 
party. Our religious and political organisations 
give an example of this way of working on the 
masses. I condemn neither way ; but culture works 
differently. It does not try to teach down to the 
level of inferior classes ; it does not try to win them 
for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made 
judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away 
with classes ; to make the best that has been thought 
and known in the world current everywhere; to 
make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness 
and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses 
them itself, freely, — nourished, and not bound by 
them. 

This is the social idea; and the men of culture 
are the true apostles of equality. The great men of 
culture are those who have had a passion for diffus- 



414 Bsst English Essays 

ing, for making- prevail, for carrying from one end 
of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best 
ideas of their time; who have laboured to divest 
knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, 
abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanise it, 
to make it efficient outside the clique of the culti- 
vated and learned, yet still remaining the best 
knowledge and thought of the time, and a true 
source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a 
man was Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of 
all his imperfections ; and thence the boundless emo- 
tion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such 
were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end 
of the last century; and their services to Germany 
were in this way inestimably precious. Generations 
will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, 
and works far more perfect than the works of Less- 
ing and Herder will be produced in Germany; and 
yet the names of these two men will fill a German 
with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names 
of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And 
why ? Because they humanised knowledge ; because 
they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; 
because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweet- 
ness and light, to make reason and the will of God 
prevail. With Saint Augustine they said : " Let us 
not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy 
knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the 
firmament, the division of light from darkness; let 
the children of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, 
make their light shine upon the earth, mark the divi- 
sion of night and day, and announce the revolution 
of the times; for the old order is passed, and the 
new arises; the night is spent, the day is come 



Matthew Arnold 415 

forth; and thou shalt crown the year with thy 
blessing, when thou shalt send forth labourers into 
thy harvest sown by other hands than theirs ; when 
thou shalt send forth new labourers to new seed- 
times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet/' 



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